Brimful Coffers

The outcry when Conan Doyle pushed Sherlock Holmes over the Reichenbach Falls, and the widespread dismay when Freeling shot Van der Valk, are nothing compared to the chaos that ensues when Lorinda Lucas tries to dispose of her characters, Miss Petunia, Lily, and Marigold. Not only does the lid blow off the fictional village of St. Waldemar Boniface, but the literary colony of Brimful Coffers is shaken to its foundations. Old feuds are resurrected and new feuds are born as a town full of mystery writers begins to wonder if Life has imitated Art, or vice versa. Even the cats, Had-I, But-Known, and Roscoe, become embroiled, and add their share to the motives for murder and frayed nerves in the community.

A decomposing body ... a severed head in a closet ... a macabre meeting with "Mother"-mystery writer Lorinda Lucas tosses yet another paperback in the trash, appalled at the gruesome direction of today's crime fiction. She's even more disturbed at the half-starved state of Roscoe, the cat next door. Before Lorinda left for her latest book tour, Roscoe was as plump and pampered as her own two felines, Had-I and But-Known. It only takes a modicum of sleuthing to find out that in Lorinda's absence Roscoe's owner, Macho Magee, has acquired a new girlfriend-a harridan who has put the gentle Macho and his pet on a strict diet. And that's only the first disturbing news in Brimful Coffers, the once-quiet village that now includes a writer's colony. Lorinda soon discovers that a hit-and-run has ended a child's life, professional jealousy has taken a deadly twist, and murder is just around the catty-corner ...