The Murder of Twelve

March 16, 2020
It’s winter, and Cabot Cove, Maine, is expecting the blizzard of the century in Land’s solid fifth Murder, She Wrote mystery (after 2019’s A Time for Murder). Before it hits, writer-sleuth Jessica Fletcher, Sheriff Mort Metzger, and family doctor Seth Hazlitt are called to a crime scene—a dead body inside a car. It looks like suicide, but Jessica thinks it’s murder. A second call takes them to an abandoned car. Then the storm arrives, and Jessica returns to the hotel she’s staying at while her house is being renovated. The hotel is bristling with wedding guests consisting of two warring families with secrets to hide. Thanks to sporadic outside contact with the sheriff, Jessica learns the murder and abandoned car from earlier in the day are connected to the wedding party. The stakes rise as someone starts killing the 12 trapped guests one by one. This is very much a throwback to the classic TV show, and Agatha Christie fans will enjoy the And Then There Were None homage. Agent: Robert G. Diforio, D4EO Literary.

March 15, 2020
Jessica Fletcher takes on a blizzard and a persistent murderer in a modern Agatha Christie pastiche. It's a decidedly mixed blessing that Jessica's staying in Cabot Cove's Hill House hotel while her own home is being renovated. Before an impending blizzard arrives, she's on hand to accompany Sheriff Mort Metzger to a car where a man's been found dead. It looks like an accident or suicide, but Jessica quickly discerns that he was murdered. With five feet of snow predicted, there's little time to figure out who killed private investigator Loomis Winslow or what happened to the people missing from a different abandoned car. Back at the hotel, Connie Mulroy asks Jessica for an autograph and invites her to join her group for dinner. Connie is the mother of the groom and part of the wedding party that is staying at the hotel, which, due to the storm, may be forced to provide the venue for the ceremony if the bride and groom ever arrive. When Connie barely survives a poisoning attempt at dinner, Jessica plunges into the affairs of her new acquaintance. All the suspects are friends or relatives, and there's been no love lost between the families ever since Connie's husband swindled the bride's father out of a bundle before jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge. As the other guests are picked off one by one, Jessica's usual lifelines remain too far away to help, and she must rely on her wits to survive. A tense, complex, action-filled mystery with shoals of red herrings and plenty of surprises.

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