- Mass Market Paperback: 304 pages
- Publisher: Avon; 7th edition (Oct 7 1999)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0380793261
- ISBN-13: 978-0380793266
- Product Dimensions: 17.6 x 10.8 x 2.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 136 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,727,018 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
Unless you find the idea of a woman who runs a mystery book store as an amateur crime solver just too cute for comfort, you'll have some fun with Carolyn G. Hart's latest cozy yarn about Annie and Max Darling, the Nick and Nora Charles of the South Carolina island resort town called Broward's Rock. Annie, of course, still keeps her Death on Demand book shop, matching wits with customers about unlikely murder methods from classic mysteries while serving them iced café lattes to ward off the summer heat. Max, the most underemployed private detective of recent memory (he doesn't seem to have had a paying client since 1995), is still as charming and sexy (to Annie, that is) as ever--although his annoying mother, Laurel, has become positively dangerous. But Laurel is only one of a veritable Orient Express-load of possible suspects when an obnoxious ex-military man is shot to death at the Broward's Rock Fourth of July Festival. The racist, sexist, antigay Bud Hatch could have been killed by any of his several enemies. It's up to Annie and Max to clear Laurel and various other friends of suspicion, and Hart certainly knows how to keep a familiar story from becoming too obvious. Other Death on Demand tales in paperback: The Christie Caper, Deadly Valentine, Death on Demand, Design for Murder, Honeymoon With Murder, A Little Class on Murder, Mint Julep Murder, Something Wicked, Southern Ghost. --Dick Adler
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
This ninth in the Death on Demand series (after Mint Julep Murder, 1995) finds mystery-bookstore owner Annie Darling in top form: polite, considerate, cheerful and relentlessly investigative. Retired Brigadier General Charlton "Bud" Hatch is a newcomer to the tiny resort community of Broward's Rock, S.C., where his arrogance, power and extreme right-wing views have quickly antagonized many of the genteel yet clannish residents. When Hatch is shot to death at the island's annual Fourth of July festival, Annie and her relaxed but shrewd husband, Max, utilize their connections and gentle diplomacy to interview some of the many idiosyncratic natives who loathed the general. Was he murdered by a cuckolded husband? What about the young, sweet do-gooder whom Hatch had terrified? Or the gay library director whose job had been threatened by the moralistic library trustee? Annie and Max tap into the best source of information anywhere?rampant gossip?and, aided by society doyenne Miss Dora, find out more than they want to know. Might Max's flaky and much-married mother be another suspect? Rich in Southern atmosphere (lots of live oak, Spanish moss and the ever-present smell of the salt marsh), populated by a diverse and engaging cast, including the fallible, endearing leads, and following a deftly constructed plot line, this tale is charming?and gripping.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
Annie Laurance Darling moved swiftly. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
Annie Laurance Darling moved swiftly. Read the first page
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
1.0 out of 5 stars
An infuriating, unrewarding book.,
By racapowski (Great Falls, MT USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Yankee Doodle Dead (Mass Market Paperback)
One of the surest ways to ward people off from a book or movie is to spoil the whole plot for them, and I came dangerously close to revealing who shot the corrupt, domineering General Bud Hatch in Yankee Doodle Dead in the first sentence of this review. I eventually decided against doing so (the solution to no mystery should be spoiled, I suppose, no matter how bad the book), but the fact that I contemplated using such drastic measures should scream a definite message - _stay away!_ Yankee Doodle Dead is irredeemable in so many ways that it traverses all individual boundaries of what constitutes badness - the pacing is horrible; the bulk of the supporting characters is ill-defined and indistinguishable; the story of the motives behind the murder, which could've been intriguing and moving in the hands of another author, jumps out of nowhere in the last fifteen pages and is hardly developed at all; and the protagonist, nympho bimbo Annie Darling, precious, incapable of taking anything seriously, and at turns passive-aggressive and bullyingly imperious, is the most distasteful character I've encountered in the mystery realm. (Her buffoonish slacker husband, Max, isn't much better.)It got to the point where I became nigh-completely detached from the story's events and could only ask myself annoyed questions - Why would a community celebrate America's Independence Day with the work of Shakespeare, an English poet? Why are career military people always depicted in mysteries as either irrational control-freak tyrants or messed-up head cases? How could a newcomer - a _Yankee_ newcomer - to such a tightly-knit Southern community gain such ungodly power in such short time? Why are the women of the island hailed as such feminist pioneers when half of them are raring to jump in the sack with Hatch and the other half can't even stand up to him? Why is Bud Hatch considered so bad when Max and Annie are arguably just as intrusive and abusive with their influence and knowledge? (And to what end does the author inject incongruous, clumsy allusions to other mystery series onto every other page? The end result reads like one of _The Onion_'s faux sports stories parodying the extent of commercial endorsements - "The Home Depot Cubs took the lead in the top of the Chevy Lumina Second Inning...the hard-fought victory, much like a frost-brewed Budweiser, left a great taste in their mouths...") The author doesn't even allow the reader the pleasure of trying to piece together the "clues", as irrelevant to the eventual solution as they are, himself; the narrative analyzes every single possible way that each tidbit could relate to the crime, so that there's absolutely no...well, mystery to it, leaving all the fun of watching someone else play a video game. The only positive bits in the book are the occasional muddy glimpses of marvelous prose - which here, unfortunately, only serve to illustrate all the more vividly the reasons why Annie's skull should be cracked with a crowbar. Judging from other readers' comments, I seem to have come in on the Death on Demand series on a very sub-par volume, but its insufferable heroine alone is enough to steer me away from it for good. Avoid this book.
2.0 out of 5 stars
Please send Annie's mother-in-law on a very long vacation.,
By A Customer
This review is from: Yankee Doodle Dead (Mass Market Paperback)
I enjoy Carolyn Hart's mysteries, but Laurel is getting very annoying and boring. I enjoy the references to other mystery writers and the rest of her characters are usually well-written. One other minor complaint, please stop the cutesy pie allusions to Annie and her hubby when they're about to "get intimate." Puhleeze, it's just too juvenile for words.
4.0 out of 5 stars
why the lists of books?,
By A Customer
This review is from: Yankee Doodle Dead (Mass Market Paperback)
I buy the Annie and Max books, but I skip over the interminable book lists the author includes every few pages. If she wants to recommend other mysteries, how about putting the lists at the end, when they don't distract from the book. If she is just padding the word count, tsk tsk.
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