Midsummer Murder (Paperback)

The Easton Arts Retreat is celebrating it's 50 anniversary, and the Jeremy Ash Dance Company has been invited to open the festivities. For Jeremy Ash, the director and founder of said dance company, this gig is a very important one, as, not only was he was the proud recipient of the prestigious Easton Scholarship, but also because Marguerite Easton was one of the few people to offer him support and help when he was trying to kick his drug addiction. However a very grim portent of things to come greets the dance company as soon as they reach the retreat. The retreat is nestled amongst some very sheer mountain-like hills, and one of the students, Larry Cleveland, at the summer camp seems to have accidentally fallen to his death. The local sheriff, who has a personal grudge against Marguerite Easton (his ex-fiancee had dumped him to marry one of the Retreat's counselors) and who seems to be dangerously homophobic, is all set to make more of this accident than it is, when another student goes missing.

Lindy is seriously disturbed by all that she's witnessing. The Retreat seems to be a hotbed of secrets and innuendo. To begin with, it looks as if Larry Cleveland was not a very well liked young man, and it appears as if he was very adapt at providing sexual favours in order to get what he wanted. The sheriff thinks that he was all set to blackmail one of the Retreat's counselors, when he was murdered by said counselor, who just happens to be the very one that married the sheriff's ex-fiancee. Could the sheriff be right? And then there is the strange behaviour of Jeremy Ash. Jeremy seems to be very tense and very much on edge, and it is affecting the manner in which he deals with the members of his company, and most importantly, with Biddy, Lindy's best friend. What does Jeremy know, and could it seriously harm the Easton Retreat? On top of it all, Lindy's husband, Glen (who disapproves of her tendency to fall into murder investigations) is about to turn up for the weekend. What will he have to say about this latest suspicious death that Lindy seems to be mixed-up in? Not only that, but Jeremy has invited Bill, the ex-policeman with whom Lindy has been solving mysteries (and with whom Lindy has a highly charged relationship), down to unofficially take a look at what's going on, because he fears what the sheriff may do. What will happen when Glen and Bill finally meet? And where is the missing student? Is he dead, or has he merely run away? And if so, why?

"The Midsummer Murders" held out a lot of promise. From the manner in which the first few chapters were shaping, I expected a whole more than was finally delivered, esp given Jeremy's and his counselor friend's strange behaviour. As with the previous mystery in this series, "The High Seas Murder" a lot of things occurred that had very little to do with the mystery at hand -- Lindy's relationship with Bill, what this could mean to her marriage, Biddy's frustration over her relationship with Jeremy, etc -- with the clues and hints about what really going on in this murder mystery strewn about for the reader to collect and piece together. And then, suddenly in the last quarter of the novel, the mystery suddenly took off, and everything fell into place. However, I still came away feeling shortchanged. Many characters in this novel could have done with a lot more development, and that tight pacing that keeps you glued to the pages was frequently absent. This book had all the potential of being a really good read, instead it was filled with distractingly extraneous bits.

If you like game-shows like Fox's "Murder in Small Town X" where you get to piece together all the relevant information, from all the nonessential stuff made available to you, then this novel should satisfy amply.