The Girl with a Curl is the story of Lexie Royce and Steve Wright (the principals in Murder for Old Times’ Sake) shortly after their marriage. They are consumed with the stumbling stones of everyday life -- furnishing a new house, training a rambunctious puppy, hiring staff, pursuing business interests in a bad economy, and getting pregnant.
When they learn from a newspaper announcement that Antoinette “Tawny” Delamarter died of poison at Scuttlebutt’s, a gentlemen’s club in Fort Wayne, they merely note it in passing. After all, Tawny -- the skank of the Carroll High School class of ’94, an exotic dancer with a “generous” reputation -- was not a friend.
But then, they learn, Tawny is survived by a teen-aged daughter, the wild-child Jacintha Caitlin, who is on a quest to find her biological father. Her only clue is a scrapbook Tawny had hidden for sixteen years. And her only help comes from Dover Pitt, a disillusioned school counselor who thinks of the Amy Winehouse clone as a curse but is always trying to do the right thing for even the most rebellious students. His search for Jacintha’s father leads to a whole new life, not only for the orphan but for himself as well.
The good-hearted Lexie, who like Jacintha lost her mother at a tender age and who favors personal (but anonymous) forms of charity, is always ready to help an orphan. Jacintha’s transformation from the ugly and neglected scullery girl to the beautiful princess ensconced in the tower bedroom is the stuff of fairy tales. But like a fairy tale, the transformation from Jacintha, the trailer-park delinquent who bowls, to JayCee, the country club darling who golfs, is punctuated with evil in all its darkest forms.
Proving that no good deed goes unpunished, chaos follows Lexie’s decision to help Jacintha. The innocent are falsely accused, old friends lose their jobs, loving marriages are torn apart, and murder victims appear in odd places.
The murderer has left a trail of clues but has nevertheless been too clever for the legal system. If the police can’t bring the evil acts to an end, who will? Two silver mementoes that were never meant to be found hold the answer for the unlikeliest of kinsman avengers.
Some of the memorable characters in Murder for Old Times’ Sake figure in this new murder mystery: Phyllis Whitlow, her son Drago and and his wife Lucy Bott; Dave Powers, a police detective, and his wife Sheila; Jean Arnold, Lexie’s executive assistant; Trude Weide, the eccentric Scrapyard maven who raises Shelties; Ed and Jessica Singer, Steve and Lexie’s good friends; and Duke Simmons, the best criminal defense lawyer in northeast Indiana. Even Matilda Royce, Lexie’s acerbic step-mother, makes a brief appearance.
But there are memorable new characters as well, especially Dover Pitt, the disillusioned school counselor who wants to be a golf pro; Todd Fingerhutt, the pool man who knows a lot of facts, some of which are true; Joey DeWitt and Libby Stuart, Jacintha’s attractive new friends; Percy Scutter, the surprisingly respectable owner of Scuttlebutt’s, and Jen Ricky, a pregnant dancer who worked with Tawny; and last but not least, the shape-shifting JayCee Delamarter, the apple of her new dad’s eye.
Novel 3
Murder for Old Times’ Sake introduced 33-year-old Alexandra “Lexie” Royce, who has everything. She’s beautiful, smart, and single again. As a self-made millionaire, her fame extends far beyond Fort Wayne. Best of all, she has just been reunited with her old boyfriend, Steve Wright. So what could go wrong?
Plenty, as it turns out, starting with her fortune. Her step-mother, half-brother, ex-husband, and financial advisor all want a piece of it. And they’ll do almost anything to get it.
Lexie’s romance with Steve doesn’t go smoothly either. Not only is he reluctant to marry again, but two other women are vying for his affections: Vicki Grinderman, a pretty young paralegal who fancies herself a New Age priestess, and Jean Arnold, Lexie’s own executive assistant, who has a drinking problem. When a sexual pervert begins stealing women’s lingerie and then two women are murdered, Lexie suddenly realizes she’s in danger too. In fear for her life, Lexie retreats to the safety of a fabulous but creepy lodge in the Upper Peninsula. Hearing that one of her stalkers left a suicide note confessing to the earlier murders, she begins to relax -- only to be lured into the killer’s trap.
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Both Murder for Old Times’ Sake and The Girl with a Curl are set in Fort Wayne, Indiana, the country’s much neglected heartland -- aka fly-over country for the coastal elite. The neglect of Fort Wayne in modern popular literature is strange. The ratio of millionaires to the population is one of the highest in the country, so there are lots of readers here who can afford to buy books. The first professional baseball game -- our all-American sport -- was played here in 1871. We know the city has international importance because Hitler reportedly placed Fort Wayne seventh on his list of U.S. cities to be destroyed. Philo Farnsworth, the inventor of the world’s first working television system, toiled over his inventions in a basement lab on Pontiac Street. And if “Mad” Anthony Wayne, for whom the city is named, hadn’t crushed the French and Indians in the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794, we’d all be talking through our noses, smoking without guilt, bathing less often, eating richer food, walking our poodles, and drinking lots more wine at lunch.
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Margarite St. John’s first two books, Face Off and Monuments to Murder, are set in southwest Florida, where the sisters -- and many other Midwesterners -- like to vacation or retire.
Novel 1
In Face Off, Lily Anderson, a pretty, self-assured career woman living in Fort Wayne, is facing problems in the law firm where she’s the office manager. She’s also sick of living so far from her only sister. She wants a better work environment, warmer weather, and marriage before she turns 30.
During Christmas vacation at her sister’s house on Marco Island, she impulsively decides to change everything in her life. Moving to Florida and finding a better job turn out to be easier than choosing the right husband from among three eligible men: Jack Moon, her long-time boyfriend, the lead guitarist in The Fly-Over Boys; Tom Lawton, an ambitious detective, fresh from a broken engagement, whom she meets on the flight to Fort Myers; and Dr. Bruce Blackburn, a rich, widowed surgeon who is also her brother-in-law’s partner and old friend. All three love her, but which one can she trust?Accidentally discovering the truth about one of the men, misled by gossip about another, and kept in the dark about the past of the third, Lily finally makes her choice. Not until she takes a fateful midnight cruise on a cigarette boat named Face Off does she learn the truth about the men in her life -- and her own heart.
Novel 2
In Monuments to Murder, Jerry Lee Beaudry, a rich widow famous for her opulent gardens in Naples, Florida, is on a quest to find the traitor who published a false abortion story about her daughter, Poppy Beaudry McBride, a former beauty queen. The abortion scandal imperils the future of Poppy’s husband, Ferrin, a conservative politician running for reelection against the smarmy Myron Mullett.
Jerry Lee will do anything to find and punish the leaker. She thinks the only people who know about Poppy’s miscarriage are her brother Verlin Grubbs, a savant who knows everything there is to know about herbs; Dr. Collin Lindstrom, who treated Poppy in the emergency room; Dewey Betz, the boy who made Poppy pregnant; and Molly Standardt, Poppy’s beauty pageant rival, now a gossip columnist. Phil Coker, the washed-up Hollywood actor who is her live-in companion, knows too, of course, but he wouldn’t talk. When she finds out she’s wrong about Phil, there’s hell to pay.
Molly Standardt sets out to rehabilitate Poppy’s reputation. And Tom Lawton is hired by Poppy’s husband to find the leaker. Together, Molly and Tom not only plumb the depths of Jerry Lee’s ruthless ambition and find the leaker but also expose an unholy alliance between Hollywood moguls and radical politicians.
The beautiful monuments, the mausoleum, and the deadly herbs in Jerry Lee’s famous gardens, as well as her strange brother Verlin, say more about Jerry Lee than even her daughter knows. When Poppy sets out to expose her mother’s dark deeds, she knows it’s dangerous -- but has no idea of the peril that awaits her. Nor can Jerry Lee, who expects her life to be immortalized in film, guess what kind of film it will be.
Some of the memorable characters in Face Off figure in this new murder mystery: Lily Anderson and the detective Tom Lawton; Molly Standardt, the gossip columnist; Sara Bancroft, Lily’s sister; Matt Bearsall, a detective; Simon Diodorus, a society walker; Verbena Cross, an aging Hollywood actress, and her body-double, Margaret Greer.
But there are memorable new characters as well, especially Jerry Lee, her brother Verlin, and her companion Phil Coker; Poppy McBride and her husband Ferrin, a Congressman running for reelection; Dee Applegate, Molly’s flamboyant mother; Myron Mullett, his wife LuAnn and his mistress Muffy Wayne; Doris Bearsall, Matt’s conservative wife; Virgil Goldstein, a left-wing Hollywood mogul, and his wife Ellen Matter.
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