Cynthia RiggsBesprekingen

Complex plot, interesting and distinct characters, but the British narrator was jarring for a story set in Massachusetts!½

Good intro for a new-to-me mystery series! But why did they choose a British narrator for a story set in the USA?

If you're into mysteries, this might be for you. As I am not a huge mystery reader, I was not pulled into the story as much as I would have liked.

A mystery for Victoria Trumbull to solve. Colley Jameson editor of the Island Enquirer fires Victoria from her 50-year position as columnist, but then hires her to investigate the obits he his receiving in the mail confirming/predicting his demise.

Colley Jameson is not a good man, a considerate man, or even a likeable man. But the twist at the end was totally unexpected! Good read.

Victoria Trumbull and her niece Elizabeth live on peaceful Martha's Vineyard--peaceful, that is, until Victoria hears a scream, investigates, and finds a body on the outgoing tide.

Victoria starts, not investigating, of course, just wandering around her island home noticing things and asking questions. Which, unfortunately, the wrong people notice. Elizabeth, who drives her aunt around, and works for the harbor master (a retired NYC cop whom some people find to be very out of place on the island), starts to have some scary experiences--being followed, nearly driven off the road, unexpected and unfamiliar visitors when she's on the late shift at the harbormaster's shack.

We get a lively picture of island life, the mix of the old residents and the new, the social changes disrupting old ways, the tourists, and a presidential vacation. The characters are interesting, individual, and compelling. I'm looking forward to reading more of this series.

Recommended.

I borrowed this book from the library.

Widow’s Wreath is the fourteenth book in the Martha’s Vineyard Mystery series.

I’ve enjoyed the other books in this series, but this one not as much. For me, there were too many suspects introduced early on in the book and it seems to take a while to learn that the wrong person had been killed. It took me a while to get everybody straight and their reasons for wanting the same person dead.

Victoria Trumball has agreed to host her 25-year-old distant cousin’s, Penny, wedding to Rocco Bufano. An electrician, Mark Johnson comes to Victoria’s home to upgrade the wiring that will be needed to support the need of additional electricity for the reception. Johnson soon asks Victoria what he should do with the scarecrow hanging in the basement. He soon learns that it is no scarecrow but in fact the body of a man that has been strangled.

Victoria wonders whether this was a good idea when she also learns that Penny has gone deeply into debt to fund the wedding and reception. The wedding, as it turns out, is a matter of convenience. Both of them think the other is rich and their answer to pay off their debts. The police are having difficulty identifying the body, but they feel that Rocco is not being completely honest when asked to identify the body. It seems that just about all of the guests and even the wedding party end up coming under suspicion. It will become clear that Rocco is the intended victim and the police will need to find the killer before someone else is murdered.

This is a well developed and interesting story with many interesting and believable characters. I would like to see future books to more like the earlier books.

I will be watching for future books in this entertaining series.

I am a bit bewildered. This should be a cozy mystery but the cozy part is somewhat lacking and the mystery is a bit confused.
There is no heroine asking questions but a set of scenes and different stories. Being a bit confused I don't know if I liked or not :(
Many thanks to Crooked Lane Books and Netgalley

Trumpet of Death by Cynthia Riggs is the thirteenth book in A Martha’s Vineyard Mystery series. It is September in West Tisbury and Victoria Trumbell is enjoying a nature walk in Sachem’s Rock with her tenant, Zach Zeller. Victoria points out various mushrooms to him including the black trumpets which are very rare and expensive (aka trumpets of death). Later that day, Zach visits his troublesome girlfriend, Samantha Eberhardt to break up with her. Unfortunately for Zach, it does not go well. Zach remembers the black trumpet mushrooms, picks them, and delivers them to Samantha. Samantha, who is not fond of mushrooms, gives them to her father, Bruno Eberhardt. Bruno is thrilled with the delicacy and plans a dinner party around them. Zach is invited to the party and is shocked to see black mushrooms on the menu. Zach ends up fleeing the party. Victoria and her young friend, Robin are walking to the softball field when they discover a body on the bicycle trail. The police discover it is Samantha Eberhardt, and Zach ends up a prime suspect. Despite Zach trying to make Samantha sick with the mushrooms, Victoria knows that Zach would not commit murder. Victoria sets out to find the real killer and prove Zach’s innocence. Can Victoria find the murderer before he claims another victim?

Trumpet of Death has a fascinating main character. Victoria is ninety-two years old and seems to know everyone in her town. She is a feisty, intelligent, and quite active for someone her age. Trumpet of Death has good writing and a nice pace. There is some humor in the book (just the right amount and right type) that will have readers laughing. I enjoyed the descriptions of the town. I give Trumpet of Death 4 out of 5 stars. I appreciated the mysteries complexity (such a rarity in cozy mysteries). I believe many readers will be surprised at the culprit’s identity. I did find some information repeated a few times throughout the book (such as peoples full names, where they worked, and their occupation). I thought Zach was lacking in intelligence. For someone his age, he seems very dense (maybe it was the drugs). I would recommend reading earlier books in A Martha’s Vineyard Mystery series (at least the first book) before Trumpet of Death. It would give you a better understanding of Victoria and the town dynamics. I thought the book had a good ending that wrapped up all the loose ends. Trumpet of Death is a book that many cozy mystery readers will appreciate.

Another substantial and smart Victoria Trumbull mystery. This one involves businessmen, financing, and scammers who want a piece of the pie. Victoria notices everything, and helps save man and business.

Great characters, good read.½

Bloodroot by Cynthia Riggs is the twelfth book in the Martha's Vineyard Mysteries. Victoria Trumbull has a painful wisdom tooth and needs to have it pulled. Victoria is waiting at Island Dental Clinic when there is a commotion. Mildred Wilmington, a patient, is dead. The West Tisbury police are called out. The receptionist, Vivian Parsons is very upset over the death and unable to drive home. A co-worker agrees to take her, but he makes a pit stop (for alcohol) along the way. Vivian waits in the car, but she is not there when the co-worker returns. Vivian is later found dead in the water (and it is not an accident). Someone wanted to make sure that Vivian did not talk. What did Vivian know or had she seen something? The investigation is not helped when Dr. Horace Mann (the head of Island Dental Clinic) has the staff clean the clinic before the forensic crew can be called in (very suspicious). Police Chief Mary Kathleen O’Neill and her staff are stretched thin because of an upcoming presidential visit. When it turns out that Mildred was poisoned, Victoria (who is a police deputy of sorts) sets out to figure out who killed the two women. Mildred was a rich woman with four grandchildren. Each one with a motive. But they are not the only suspects. Victoria has also to deal with her Elizabeth’s (granddaughter) ex-husband, Lockwood. Lockwood is a nasty and cruel man. He has decided that Victoria’s home should belong to him. What will Lockwood do to achieve his goal? It is going to be a busy week for Victoria!

This is the first book I have read in this series (I had not heard of the series prior to seeing this book listed). I did not know it was the twelfth book in the series when I agreed to read it. It is extremely confusing at first (and through most of the book). There are a lot of characters (especially from the dental clinic) and suspects (over a dozen). The two murders occur within the first two chapters (a writer should never put the crime right at the beginning of the book). The mystery is complex (which I loved), but the killer was the person I picked out at the beginning. The clues (which we get in the last half of the book) will lead you in the direction of the killer. I liked how the main character, Victoria Trumbull conducted her investigation. I give Bloodroot 4 out of 5 stars. The book has a good pace and is nicely written (which makes the novel easy to read). This book can be read alone. The main characters are easy to keep straight (it was just all the dental staff that made it confusing). I will definitely be reading the other books in this series and look forward to future novels.

I received a complimentary copy of Bloodroot from NetGalley in exchange for an honest evaluation of the novel.

I really enjoyed this series and author. I didn't read them in order, but it didn't seem to make a difference. I think this was my favorite. I hope that Cynthia Riggs is working on number eleven.

A really cute cozy mystery starring a feisty 92-year-old sleuth. There were lots of false turns and red herrings. The final resolution was funny and I enjoyed listening to it unwind.

Smart inspiring read with lots of red herrings. Loved learning about mathematical knitting.½

This is the first entry in a mystery series begun by the author in her 60's. It has some storyline weaknesses and big flaws in the telling, mostly that we seldom see anything significant happening, but only hear about it second or third hand afterward. But having said that, I found it enjoyable to read, and when I woke up the morning after I finished it, I was sorry not to have the world created in the novel waiting for me to step into. The characters are well presented, and I think they will wear well. The protagonist here is a 92 year old woman whose thinking is crisp, whose New England attitude is crusty, and whose baked beans are legendary. She knows her physical limitations, but doesn't give in to all of them all the time. The series is set on Martha's Vineyard, with the main character's granddaughter working as assistant harbormaster. Riggs knows whereof she speaks, as she is descended from many generations of islanders; she has been a sailing instructor, run a ferry boat company and a B&B, and holds a U.S. Coast Guard Master's license (100 ton) as well as an MFA in creative writing. Her biography is pretty remarkable reading, itself. She was also kind enough to respond promptly to my e-mail request for a photo for her author page on LT. I like this woman, and will definitely give the next book in the series a chance. There are 11 of them so far, all with local plants featured in the titles. She has said she plans to write 20, and then retire. Slacker.

Review written June 2013

Victoria Trumbell is a 92 year old living on Martha's Vineyard. She also happens to be a Deputy Police Chief. Her granddaughter, Elizabeth lives with her. Elizabeth and Victoria discover a body one night and this leads to more murders, a case of arson, a motorcycle rally, bribery, embezzlement, kidnapping, and finally Victoria being made an honorary member of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head/Azuinnah.

Victoria is a little slower physically than she was in her younger days, but she hasn't slowed down mentally at all. She sounds like a fun lady. It's a good series that I have been meaning to get to and I am glad that I did.

Really, it's more like 3.5 stars, but I couldn't bring myself to bump it up to 4.

Deadly Nightshade is a mystery set on Martha's Vineyard. The "detective"? A 92-year-old poet named Victoria Trumbull. One evening while waiting on her granddaughter, an assistant harbormaster, Victoria hears a scream followed by a splash. When her granddaughter and the harbormaster show up, Victoria has them go out on the boat to investigate and they find the body of a shady local character floating in the water. Victoria is the only witness, so she is in some danger. But she's determined to sort out this mystery.

This book was entertaining; it had some interesting, quirky characters, and I really didn't figure out the mystery on my own. What more can you really ask for? I enjoy these kinds of books, but they aren't my very-favorites, so my rating is a little biased that way. If you like Miss Marple, Aunt Dimity, or even Agatha Raisin, you'll probably like Victoria Trumbull also.

This audiobook took place in Martha's Vineyard, providing a delightful setting. The description of the Island is undoubtedly accurate as the author ,Cynthia Riggs, lives on Martha's Vineyard. Her feisty, 92 year-old amateur sleuth, regarded as an honorary deputy to the West Tisbury Police Department for all her help in solving another crime in Riggs' first book, is at it again. She is asked by the Conservation Trust on the Island to find the beautiful and delicate Cranefly Orchard on land that has been sold by a crotchety inhabitant of the Island. As she searches with her 11 year old assistant, whom she grows very fond of, they discover the body of a local attorney. The suspense builds and the ending does not fail to excite us as Victoria bravely carries on in the face of crafty criminals trying to get away with their plan. I would be willing to listen to another book in this series and am going to find the first one, since I started out of order with the second. The reader was quite good, also. I listened to this on a Playaway, one of the local Libraries newest methods of media.½

Much improved, The best yet.

I have not read all of the books in this series yet, but this one grabbed me from the first pages, with its bumbling murderer and his comedy of errors. I love the character of Victoria Trumbull, the 92-year-old sleuth in the series, and the setting of Martha's Vineyard, with its influx of tourists every summer. A delight.

92-year-old Victoria Trumbull is back to detecting again when there is a request to disinter a coffin in a plot belonging to a non-resident island family. Victoria doesn't remember there being a burial ten years before of an alleged suicide. Meanwhile there's a fire that re-erupts at the dump. People turn up missing and dead. It's up to Victoria and Casey, the police chief, to sort through the motives and suspects before another person turns up dead. The solution was fairly obvious all along. The red herrings didn't really fool me. I find Victoria an unlikely sleuth, and the unbelievability factor is huge for this series. Still, it was a nice light read for fall break.

Another in the charming Marytha's Vineyard Mystery series, starring one of my favorite amateur sleuths: 92 year old Victoria Trumbull of Martha's Vineyard. She has the chief of police driving her around after they took her driver's license away, she still mounts steps like a 10 year old, climbs ladder, catches fish, and has that imperious school marm voice that can bring 60 year old men to their knees.

When she is fired from her long term job writing a news (gossip?) column for the Island Observer, she threatens to sue the editor Colley Jamison for age discrimination. A series of ugly murders gets in the way of her legal action however, and she ends up boosting the circulation of the competing island newsletter in the process of tracking down clues and solving all the murders the local and state police can't.

A perfectly delightful cozy with a strong flavor of New England and the Vineyard. The author gives us a good picture of the diverse sections of the island and the people who live there year round.

I listened to this one on audio, and my only complaint is having a British voice do the narrating. It seems very out of place. Davina Porter is one of my favorite narrators for audio books, but the voice just isn't right for Martha's Vineyard.½

Indian Pipes is a mystery set on Martha’s Vineyard , featuring a 92-year-old amateur detective named Victoria Trumbull. The mystery surrounds two murders that seem to be related to the attempt of the Wampanoag tribe to build a casino on Martha’s Vineyard . It’s thus a timely mystery, written by Cynthia Riggs in 2006, just before the Massachusetts legislature defeated a bill to permit Indian gaming. The Indians, of course, insist on sovereign immunity from state laws, but the Federal Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988 gave states powers in this area that they would not normally have.

The book is also an example of what some mystery fans are beginning to call geezer lit: books whose main characters or more specifically whose detectives are senior citizens. Some examples of geezer lit pointed out in a recent AARP Bulletin article are Mike Befeler’s Retirement Homes Are Murder, Parnell Hall’s The Sudoku Puzzle Murders, and Rita Lakin’s Getting Old Is to Die For . I think Michael Dibdin may have anticipated this mystery subgenre in 1993 when he wrote The Dying of the Light, about a murder in an English nursing home and the woman who solves it, who is one of the inmates.

Indian Pipes has good writing and plenty of plot complications. A biker rally is being held the weekend of the book’s action, and one of the murdered men is known to hate bikers, because his favorite niece has a black biker lover. A town engineer who opposes the Indian casino is blackmailing his gay former lover. Riggs likes to defeat conventional expectations: she depicts very strong women characters, clear-headed older folks, and here, the head of the biker rally is a butterfly-loving college professor.

Cynthia Riggs titles her book with the names of plants, I suppose because her detective, Victoria Trumbull, is a gardener. The Indian Pipes of this book, her sixth in this series, are flowers rather than ceremonial peace pipes, and her other books have titles such as The Paperwhite Narcissus and, perhaps inevitably, Deadly Nightshade, which was Riggs’s first book.

Victoria solves this one by laying a trap for the killer, after enlisting the aid of the younger woman who’s the village police chief and of a fisherman who is a member of the Wampanoag Tribe. When I imagine Victoria , she looks like my 93-year-old mother-in-law, who’s lost some short-term memory, but who still has all her mental chops. I suspect that Cynthia Riggs calculates that all her readers will have a sharp nonagenarian to cast as her detective when they replay the plot in their minds’ eye

A great little mystery with wonderfully motivated and developed characters. Set on Martha's vineyard, the harbor master's assistant's grandma hears someone being murdered. Thus begins a good who-dunnit set against a faint backdrop of visiting POTUS and a island swarming with FEDS; there's an assortment of surly teenagers, a platoon of caricatures of New England fishermen, a retired NYPD cop, a mysterious computer expert, some hard-working stereotyped assertive females, a second murder and whoa - a third???

NO SPOILERS....the plot and characters were well enoughed developed that the audio got me through several hours of rigorous gardening. HOWEVER, as an audio, it has a serious flaw. The book is set in New England - not OLD ENGLAND. With Davina Porter as the narrator, you must disassociate from Martha's Vineyard because her very high class English accent really gets in the way. I really like her narrations...and listen to them whenever I see them, but her voice doesn't work for this work. It's even worse, when she uses various english accents for the dock workers. I doubt seriously if they came from Scotland, or Cornwall, etc. Truly disappointing in an otherwise acceptable book. Also posted to http://www.tutus2cents.blogspot.com½

Good. Quick, easy read.

Quick read.