Anger is simmering under the bucolic facade of Tanglewood vineyard... All Ben Taylor wants is to get away from the police force where he worked undercover for years. The RCMP has cleared his name in an Ottawa shooting, but that hasn’t cleared his conscience. He arrives anonymously at Tanglewood Farms in Southwestern Ontario, where he worked in his youthful summers. Back then, it was a simple family-run vineyard, but it is a far different place today. The farm has become the hub of a powerful family empire. When a body is discovered in a shack on the farm, Ben is drawn into the investigation. Meanwhile, the woman who was once the love of his life now lives as a recluse behind the darkened windows of the farmhouse. As she begins to reveal to Ben her own dark secrets, they become suspects in the eyes of the police, the migrant workers, and even each other.

Sam Willson was born and raised in Vermont, educated in and around Boston, and worked there and in New York. He's an avid traveler, living for two years in Switzerland, and visiting Sydney and the North Pole, Singapore and St. Petersburg, and many places in between. He now lives in Sag Harbor, near the east end of Long Island, NY. (synopsis for Miracles & Murders, book 119342. The stories in this collection are rather evenly divided between down-and-dirty realism and wild, not to say far-fetched, fantasy. The narrator of Menu is a man you might already know, while the lovely Lady Chastain, pianist for the Queen, us probably not at the center of your circle of friends. The longest story here, The End of Humphrey Kohn, despite its violence and unkindness, could well be read as a morality play. But who needs labels? Enjoy!

Superstar conductor Sir Gregory Langhorne and his globe-trotting, violin-soloist son Jonathan Langhorne are the best of friends—until a brutal murder shatters their lives and Jonathan becomes the prime suspect. Six years later, Sir Gregory is now the music director of the world famous Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra and has finally reconciled with his son Jonathan, just as members of the orchestra are being killed off one by one. The challenge for brilliant young hotshot Philadelphia Detective Cynthia Masters is to solve not only the orchestra murders, but the question of why murder seems to follow the Langhornes. Has Masters finally met her match—a case that cannot be solved? Set in London and Philadelphia, this dramatic story of murder, infidelity, and the abuse of money and power establishes Cynthia Masters as a world-class detective in this thrilling and unusual mystery.

Winston Patrick gave up practicing law for what he thought would be the more sedate life of teaching high school. But when Tim, a student, can't take his same-sex partner to the prom, Winston leads his students in a lawsuit to reverse the school's ruling - and in doing so unleashes intolerance that leads to Tim being killed.

The Mystery Fancier, Volume 5 Number 1, January/February 1981, contains: "Spy Series Characters in Hardback, Part VI," by Barry Van Tilburg, "Hunter and Hunted," by Jane S. Bakerman, "The Body in the Library," by Martin Morse Wooster, and "Blame Stephen Sondheim," by E. F. Bleiler.

Several strange happenings, followed by the instant death of a master violinist, turn a few days of pleasure with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood into another crackling case for highly cultivated newspaper owner C.B. Greenfield and his sleuthing sidekick, chief reporter Maggie Rome.

Many bibliographers focus on women who write. Lawyer Barnett looks at women who detect, at women as sleuths and at the evolving roles of women in professions and in society. Excellent for all women's studies programs as well as for the mystery hound.