The Body in the Ivy: A Faith Fairchild Mystery

This is mystery at it's best--you won't know until the last page who is guilty. The settings are fantastic. My favorite mystery of 2008. Bought copies for Christmas gifts, I enjoyed it THAT much.

This my third Faith Fairchild mystery and it certainly won't be the last! I really enjoyed reading this book. The similarity to the plot of the Agatha Christie book didn't bother me at all. Thank goodness the number of deaths was much smaller! I liked the flashbacks which gave us the history of these women and their time at the same college. The college I attended had similar rules so I was tickled to read them. The flashbacks were necessary so we would know why these particular women were invited. It isn't until late in the book that we learn why it has taken so long to get them together. I didn't try to figure out the killer. I just read along enjoying the description of that wonderful house, the island and the food---especially the chocolate cake. I'm going to try that recipe as soon as I can!

I was lucky enough to pick up an advanced reader copy for THE BODY IN THE IVY at the American Library Association conference in New Orleans, so I didn't have to wait as long as most to read the latest Faith Fairchild novel by Katherine Hall Page. At Malice Domestic this year, Katherine was the guest of honor and also won the Agatha Best Novel of the Year ('05) for THE BODY IN THE SNOWDRIFT. That's a tough act to follow, but she has pulled it off. The atmospheric Maine island and fantastic house she describes are the perfect setting for her "locked-room" type of mystery. The characters are interesting, strong, and ring a bell for this grad (coed, Non-Ivy, alas) of the late 1960s. I enjoyed the flashbacks to tell the backstory. And the Maine weather descriptions were perfect!

Faith Fairchild is asked to cater a reunion for reclusive author Barbara Bailey Bishop and her friends from Pelham, an exclusive women's college. The reunion is to take place at a remote island home which is owned by Bishop, whose real name is Elaine Prince. Most of the women who have been invited have a specific expertise, such as finance or gardening, which they have been asked to share with their old college friends. Once they arrive, however, they see that the agenda is quite different. Two of the women are murdered and it becomes apparent that their hostess is out to discover which of them pushed her twin sister to her death just before they all graduated from Pelham. Flashbacks of their college years show that each of the women had reason to want to kill Prin Prince, who act cruelly towards each one of them. This book is a real departure from the others in the series and is a clever tribute to Agatha Christie's classic "10 Little Indians" in which guests to a home are eliminated one by one by a clever murderer in their midst. I found the change refreshing and thoroughly enjoyed the guessing game as to who the murderer was.

On a privately owned New England island, bestselling author Barbara Bailey Bishop hires Faith Fairchild to cater a college reunion celebration. Barbara and her classmates including her twin Helene known as Prin attended Ivy school Pelham College in the late 1960s; her name back then was Elaine Prince. In 1970, Prin fell from a campus tower to her death in what the police ruled was a suicide the night before graduation. Faith has always felt otherwise that one of these eight killed her sibling who was universally desired and loathed. Now she has everyone who could have committed the act stranded on the island where she plans to learn the truth. The first death is considered an accident, but those that follow leave the dwindling survivors panicked as there is no escape until there is none. In the sixteenth Fairchild amateur sleuth (can Faith still be considered an amateur, pay aside?) Katherine Hall Page pays obvious homage to Agatha Christie by modernizing And Then there Were None. The story line is fast-paced and filled with rising tension as one by one the attendees are dying with no way off the island (a storm adds to their isolation). As Faith, the only outsider, investigates while trying to remain alive, readers will appreciate this superior tale that ends with a Christie style twist. Harriet Klausner