Games & Hobbies - Fiction, Detective Fiction, Women Detectives - Fiction, Occupations - Fiction

Death Takes a Hand

Name: Death Takes a Hand
Author: Susan Moody
ISBN: 9780786202782

by Susan Moody

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Overview

Actually it would have been hard to miss the large body of Sonia Wetherhead, sprawled on the drawing room floor with her head bashed in. Nor would it have been easy to overlook the equally dead Colonel and Mrs. Plumpton sitting at the green baize table, their cards - and eternity - spread out before them. But bridge teacher Cassie Swann also notices numerous connections both above-board and illicit among her seemingly respectable students at a stately Cotswold country house hotel. There's Ned Causobon, the dishy wine merchant with a suspicious lack of oenological knowledge, a strong interest in bridge teachers - and apparently a rather sordid past with Sonia. There's also the robust Felicity Carradine, who seems to have lifted Sonia's childhood recollections verbatim for use in the bestselling opus Love's Tempestuous Sea; and Thomas Lambert, a rather hapless journalist whose magazine profile of Sonia failed to please. On a more personal level, Cassie also detects a sudden calm in her formerly busy schedule and a serious drop in her bank account. She may only have discovered the victims, but others - particularly the tabloid press and future employers - see a clear connection between Cassie and violent death. As her career wilts, much like one of her unfortunate houseplants, Cassie decides to match her bridge-sharpened wits against a ruthless and desperate opponent. But winner will take all in this perilous game - and the stakes are life or death.

When biology teacher Cassandra Swann turns in her lab coat to play bridge professionally, she discovers she has a surprising skill for detection. Three of Cassie's star students are dead, and she must go deep inside the tightly knit bridge circuit to expose the passions and rivalries that lead to murder.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Veteran Moody ( House of Moons and the Penny Wanawake series) enlivens her traditional English cozy with a welcome new heroine. Cassie Swann, 30-year-old instructor at a Winter Bridge Weekend in a country hotel, discovers three students dead at their table and sneaks a peek at their hands before calling the police. Cassie, a constant dieter cursed with a Rubenesque form and no luck in love, considers the guests who assembled at the welcoming party the night before, but she can't imagine who might have wielded the blunt instrument that did in the spiteful Sonia Wetherhead (the elderly Colonel and Mrs. Plumpton are determined to have died of simultaneous natural causes). When the next weekend convenes with many of the same (surviving) participants, another old woman dies in her bed. Moody is cagey with her cast of suspects, including a famous author, an editor and a smooth-talking wine merchant named Casaubon. When Cassie isn't teaching bridge or trying to find out who's threatening her new career, she thinks guiltily about desserts and love, fending off the propositions of another student whom she--with yet more guilt--finds crudely proletarian. Adeptly mining laughs from the milieu, Moody leads her likable sleuth to a solution and the promise of success in both business and love. (Apr.)