Nine Lives to Die: A Mrs. Murphy Mystery, by Rita Mae Brown
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Nine Lives to Die: A Mrs. Murphy Mystery, by Rita Mae Brown
Best Ebook Online Nine Lives to Die: A Mrs. Murphy Mystery, by Rita Mae Brown
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY SUSPENSE MAGAZINERita Mae Brown and her feline co-author Sneaky Pie Brown return with a mystery starring Mary Minor “Harry” Haristeen, intrepid kitty sleuths Mrs. Murphy and Pewter, and Tee Tucker, the ever-faithful crime-solving corgi. This time around, Harry and her animal friends track a killer whose trail has gone as cold as the weather in December. NINE LIVES TO DIE Winter has come to Crozet, Virginia, bringing with it a fresh blanket of snow. Harry and her husband, Fair, are hip deep in their usual end-of-the-year activities: distributing food to needy residents, and shopping for outfits for the Silver Linings youth organization’s annual fundraising gala. But buried beneath the white stuff are dark secrets from Crozet’s past—and Harry and her posse of pet detectives are determined to sniff them out. Two Silver Linings mentors have been found dead in suspicious circumstances. If that weren’t enough to chill the bones of the locals, a pair of severed human fingers has turned up in a pencil jar in the bookkeeper’s office at St. Cyril’s church. What does this grisly display have to do with the mysterious disappearance of Harry’s voluptuous high school Latin teacher, a quarter of a century ago? Maybe nothing. But when the animals make another gruesome discovery in the woods behind Harry’s farm, it becomes clear that terrible crimes have been committed in Crozet—and somebody’s gone to great lengths to cover them up. It’s time to stop shoveling snow and start digging for clues. The truth will be revealed. A cold case will be solved. And a twenty-five-year-old love triangle is about to get untangled. The weather outside may be frightful, but Harry and her four-legged friends refuse to be spooked off the case.Praise for Nine Lives to Die “Witty and entertaining . . . a recipe for continued success and an engaging read.”—Richmond Times-Dispatch “The unabashed loves of [Rita Mae Brown’s] life . . . are infectious. Perhaps because they are so clearly heartfelt, it’s easy to be swept up in the glory of her passions.”—New York Journal of Books“Murder and mayhem are the order of the day in bestseller [Rita Mae] Brown’s well-plotted twenty-second Mrs. Murphy mystery. . . . Brown’s idyllic world, with its Christian values, talking animals, and sympathetic middle-aged pet owners, has understandably struck a chord with many readers.”—Publishers Weekly “Rita Mae Brown, along with . . . Sneaky Pie, have made Harry Harristeen and her feline companion, Mrs. Murphy, household names.”—Library JournalPraise for the Mrs. Murphy mysteries “As feline collaborators go, you couldn’t ask for better than Sneaky Pie Brown.”—The New York Times Book ReviewFrom the Hardcover edition.
Nine Lives to Die: A Mrs. Murphy Mystery, by Rita Mae Brown - Amazon Sales Rank: #190247 in Books
- Brand: Brown, Rita Mae/ Sneaky Pie Brown (CON)
- Published on: 2015-03-31
- Released on: 2015-03-31
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 6.90" h x .90" w x 4.30" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Mass Market Paperback
- 352 pages
Nine Lives to Die: A Mrs. Murphy Mystery, by Rita Mae Brown Review Praise for Nine Lives to Die “Witty and entertaining . . . a recipe for continued success and an engaging read.”—Richmond Times-Dispatch “The unabashed loves of [Rita Mae Brown’s] life . . . are infectious. Perhaps because they are so clearly heartfelt, it’s easy to be swept up in the glory of her passions.”—New York Journal of Books“Murder and mayhem are the order of the day in bestseller [Rita Mae] Brown’s well-plotted twenty-second Mrs. Murphy mystery. . . . Brown’s idyllic world, with its Christian values, talking animals, and sympathetic middle-aged pet owners, has understandably struck a chord with many readers.”—Publishers Weekly “Rita Mae Brown, along with . . . Sneaky Pie, have made Harry Harristeen and her feline companion, Mrs. Murphy, household names.”—Library JournalPraise for the Mrs. Murphy mysteries “As feline collaborators go, you couldn’t ask for better than Sneaky Pie Brown.”—The New York Times Book ReviewFrom the Hardcover edition.
About the Author Rita Mae Brown is the bestselling author of the Sneaky Pie Brown series; the Sister Jane series; A Nose for Justice and Murder Unleashed; Rubyfruit Jungle; In Her Day; and Six of One, as well as several other novels. An Emmy-nominated screenwriter and a poet, Brown lives in Afton, Virginia. Sneaky Pie Brown, a tiger cat born somewhere in Albemarle County, Virginia, was discovered by Rita Mae Brown at her local SPCA. They have collaborated on twenty-one previous Mrs. Murphy mysteries—in addition to Sneaky Pie’s Cookbook for Mystery Lovers and Sneaky Pie for President.From the Hardcover edition.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. 1“Gin!”“I don’t believe it.” Susan Tucker stared at the cards that her childhood friend, Harriett Haristeen, “Harry,” had smacked down.The six other women in the room, all slack-jawed, came over to view the winning card.“Well, Susan, she did,” BoomBoom Craycroft, another childhood friend, said and smiled.“Harry can’t play cards worth squat,” Susan complained.“Well, I did tonight.” Harry beamed. “Susan, mark your calendar, Tuesday, December third, my best friend Harry knocked the stuffing out of me at gin.”Jessica Hexham was petite and middle-aged, well dressed even though the evening was relaxed. She murmured, “Maybe something less exuberant for the calendar—just a red-letter day?”“Do you remember when Miss Donleavey lectured us about red-letter days on the ancient Roman calendar?” Susan rolled her eyes.BoomBoom, Susan, and Harry had been in the same class at old Crozet High School. While the buildings still stood, students now attended Western Albemarle High School, a large complex consolidating former small community schools. Jessica Hexham, Alicia Palmer, Charlene Vavilov, and Arden Higham had not. Jessica had attended Miss Porter’s; Alicia, Orange High School; Arden, Buckingham High; and Charlene, older than the others, had attended St. Catherine’s in Richmond.With the exception of Jessica, all were central Virginia natives. Jessica, born and raised in Concord, Massachusetts, often found them amusing while contradictory at times, and they were reliably solid friends.“Alea jacta est,” Susan pronounced with emphasis.Harry translated. “The die is cast. Said when Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon in 49 B.C. at the head of the Thirteenth Legion. He knew civil war would follow.”“Talk about a red-letter day,” said BoomBoom.“Isn’t it something, though, how a device thousands of years old still works, I mean, a red-letter day? God bless Miss Donleavey. She taught us well.”Jessica also recalled her Latin teacher at the expensive private school, perhaps less fondly. “I would never bless Miss Greely.”The others laughed.“Charlene, bet you took Latin at St. Catherine’s,” Alicia wondered.“You couldn’t go to college without two years of it,” said Charlene. “I took four. It’s helped me more than I could know when I hated memorizing those conjugations.” She laughed.“Funny, isn’t it?” the uncommonly beautiful Alicia said. “What we use? What we remember?”“What I remember, apart from amo, amas, amat, was Miss Donleavey’s mysterious disappearance. Never found her.” Harry picked up the cards to shuffle.Susan reached across the card table, placing her hand on Harry’s forearm. “Don’t you dare.”“Huh?” Harry blinked.“I’ll shuffle.”“Are you calling me a cheat?” Harry’s voice rose.“No, but you won the last hand, so it’s my turn to shuffle. Plus, what if you have a hot hand?” Susan used the gambling term.“I’d better tell that to my husband.”This evoked more laughter.The lights flickered, once, twice, then no light.“Dammit,” Susan cursed the dark. “Stay put, ladies. I’ll get the candles.”“You need my little flashlight.” Harry reached into her pocket, pulling out a two-and-a-half-inch LED flashlight made in China.Susan pressed the button. “Wow.”“What else do you have in your pocket?” Jessica asked.“One pocketknife,” BoomBoom answered for Harry. “She always has a pocketknife and a little money.”“The emphasis is on little,” said Harry, emptying her pockets onto the card table as Susan returned with candles.“Let me help you.” Thanks to the tiny LED flashlight, Alicia could see. She reached for some candles.“There’s a hurricane glass lamp. Well, here, let’s do it together. Girls, we’ll be right back.”True to her word, Susan and Alicia returned to the living room with small brass candleholders, which they placed about and lit. The large hurricane candleholder glowed on the card table. All held six- to eight-inch candles.Susan noticed the small pile of debris.“Harry, what’s your stuff doing on the card table?”“Jessica wanted to know what was in my pocket.”“In the dark?” Susan questioned.“We knew there’d be light,” Harry shot back.Jessica dutifully investigated the contents: one Case pocketknife, a folded cotton handkerchief, twenty-two dollars in small bills, one dog cookie.Harry pointed out the cookie. “Never know when I might get hungry.”The ladies laughed again as Alicia walked to the large triple-sash windows. “Girls, we’re in for it.”“No kidding?” Harry hurried over, as did the others.“The storm’s early.” BoomBoom, like all country people, paid intense attention to the weather.“We have a little time before we need to worry about the roads,” Harry confidently predicted. “Everyone has four-wheel drive, right?”“If not, I’m happy to sell you one.” Charlene smiled. She and her husband, Pete, owned the Ford dealership.“We’re good,” the others replied.“Well, let’s not play cards by candlelight. Ladies, I whipped up vegetable hors d’oeuvres, and they’re really tasty, if I do say so myself. I can’t eat them all. You have to help me. Harry, use your flashlight again and let’s bring the food out from the kitchen. BoomBoom, you know where the bar is. Give the girls what they want.”BoomBoom picked up a candle as she glided to the well-stocked bar. Susan’s husband, Ned, was a delegate to the state legislature in Richmond, and the couple entertained frequently. In this part of the world, good liquor was considered an essential by any host and hostess. Southerners did drink wine, but many still preferred a high-octane bourbon or scotch, and then there were the legions of vodka drinkers who believed it didn’t linger on their breath.Once settled in the living room, comfortable in decidedly not-modern décor, Jessica, curious, asked, “So what did happen to your Latin teacher?”“Nobody knows.” BoomBoom shrugged. “She disappeared after a Friday-night football game. Her car was in the parking lot. Monday, she didn’t come to school.”“We played the Louisa Dragons that night,” Harry recalled. “Good game. Miss Donleavey never missed a football game.”“She dated the coach, Mr. Toth,” Susan filled in. “Handsome, handsome, handsome.”“Coach Toth? That Toth?” Jessica asked. “Silver Linings?” She mentioned a youth organization the coach supported, as did all the husbands of the women in the room. Apart from helping young men, business leaders and former athletes ran Silver Linings. To belong was beneficial to one’s career.“Jessica, this must be irritating, being in the middle of a bunch of old friends.” Harry handed her a napkin.“No, it’s fascinating. A vanished Latin teacher.”“You know the stereotype of the old-maid Latin teacher? Well, not Miss Donleavey. She was voluptuous, raven-haired, so pretty,” BoomBoom noted, herself voluptuous.“Suspects?” Jessica’s eyebrows raised.Miranda answered. “At first, people thought it might have been a rival of the coach’s. Men were crazy for her.”Susan added, “Lots of men were questioned. Everyone had an alibi.”“Anyone else?” Jessica persisted.“Esther Mercier. Hated Miss Donleavey, just hated her.” Harry bit into a carrot incised with a tiny trench filled with rich cream cheese.“In love with Coach Toth.” BoomBoom filled in facts. “An attractive enough woman, but not in Miss Donleavey’s league.”“What was her first name?” Jessica asked. “Miss Donleavey?”“Uh, Margaret. It’s funny, but I still have a hard time calling my teachers by their first names. I mean, Coach Toth is always Coach Toth.” Susan smiled. “And eventually he did marry Miss Mercier, one of the math teachers.”“You’d think someone would have known something. Crozet is still a small place,” Charlene wondered.“If they did, no one noticed. Crozet, like any place anywhere in the world, is full of secrets that people take to their graves,” Harry remarked. “Miss Donleavey’s kin, all older, are gone. It’s one of those persistent small-town mysteries.”“Well, people don’t just disappear off the face of the earth.” Alicia twirled a fresh bit of broccoli.“The Black Dahlia,” BoomBoom countered.“You’re right, to a degree,” said Alicia. “ ’Course, I wasn’t in Hollywood then. And she didn’t disappear, Sweetie. They never found the killer.”“You’re right.” BoomBoom got up and walked over to the window, nose almost on the windowpane. “It’s really coming down now. We’d all better head home.”“Let me help you clean up,” Harry offered.“A tray of vegetables and a couple of glasses? Anyway, no power, no water. Go on. If your cellphones don’t work you can still text if you have a Droid.”Arden said, “I hope the Silver Linings fund-raiser isn’t canceled.”“We’ll cross our fingers.” Charlene crossed hers.After a long, careful drive, Harry slowly finally drove down her long farm driveway, windshield wipers flipping as fast as they could. She pulled in front of the old white frame farmhouse, cut the motor, the lights with it.Golden candlelight cascaded over the snow. The frosted windows glowed pale gold, the wavy imperfections of the handblown glass all the more obvious with the candles behind her.“Mom’s home.” Inside the house, Tucker the corgi barked joyfully.Pewter flopped on the kitchen table, lifted her head. “About time.”Mrs. Murphy, the tiger cat, walked alongside Fair, Harry’s husband, as he opened the kitchen door to the porch. He carried a huge flashlight, which he focused on the path to the back porch, screened-in in summer, glassed-in in winter.“Honey, I’m glad you’re home.” He stepped into the snow.“Fair, get back inside. I can see.”He didn’t, of course, kissing her as she hurried onto the porch, Tucker and Mrs. Murphy at her feet.
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Most helpful customer reviews
41 of 41 people found the following review helpful. An old friend in great form By Fuzzy's Mom Bliss! The second cat mystery series that I read was Mrs. Murphy. From the first book onwards I enjoyed the highjinks of that wise cat, Tucker the corgi and Pewter the catitude queen. The humans in the series, from heroine Harry and her husband Fair have always seemed like good friends and I have looked forward to each successive chapter.There were times in the more recent books when I felt that Rita Mae Brown(and dare I say Sneaky Pie) were getting a bit preachy about some social and political issues. It did not make me stop reading but it did dull some of the pleasure.I am delighted to say that with NINE LIVES TO DIE, the dyanmic duo is back. I enjoyed this book so much that I read it in less than a day.It is good to see my friends back in form and I would give this two paws up, five purrs and a rousing recommendation.
31 of 34 people found the following review helpful. First sentence turn-off By budg1946 This is perhaps my favorite series; however, the last few novels have evidenced none of the vivid descriptions of the natural environment that evoke the feeling of being in and sharing in the lovely Virginia town of Crozet. I have wondered if they were being penned, or if the author just became tired of the series and was unwilling to put much time into recent offerings. That saddened me. I was anxious to see if this had changed. When the first paragraph "renamed" Harry as Harriett, rather than Mary Minor, I became certain that this was a series that had been basically abandoned by the author. Sad. Anytime this changes, I will be back on board. Some of the most enjoyable reading I have ever encountered. Rita Mae Brown is a treasure.
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful. Skeletons and severed fingers By cathairetic When Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker (two cats and a dog) meet a coyote carrying off a skeletal human arm, they manage to snag a beautiful gold bracelet that falls from it. This will be their Christmas present for their "Mom," Mary Minor Haristeen. They find the rest of the skeleton in the roots of a blown over walnut tree. They manage to get the attention of Harry (Mary Minor) and her husband, Fair, who drive up the mountain in response to Tucker's barking and the howling of the coyote. This skeleton is one of the mysteries in this book. The second is who killed two wealthy businessmen who contributed greatly to a local children's charity.Some readers think that author Rita Mae Brown is often too preachy about causes she likes to mention in her novels. I do not think she does this in this one. It's true, there are a few minor mentions, but I found any opinions expressed by the characters to be just common sense. I really enjoyed the interactions of all the animal characters and since I live in Virginia I found her comments about living in Virginia very funny and too true.For once I guessed who did what and that is very unusual for me. I highly recommend this entry in the series. It is also interesting to see how "the other half" lives. I liked reading that Harry doesn't want to spend any money on the clothing she needs for fancy fund raisers, but she wears the most expensive perfume in the world. Enjoy!
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