I enjoyed the summer, Midwestern setting, and the relationship between Joan and her son. There was a LOT of time spent on who had access to the victim...it got tiresome. ( )

Third book in the Joan Spencer Mysteries. The story opens with a tornado hitting the small town of Oliver and catching Joan as she was walking home through a park. She spots a young girl who had slipped away from her parents and is able to shield the girl in a creek bed while the tornado blasts through. Joan returns the girl to her family, Judge David Putnam and wife Ellen. Joan later finds Judge and Mrs. Putnam are actors in the play, Ruddigore, she is playing the viola in the symphony for. During an actual performance, and seemingly with the audience as witnesses, the Judge is murdered. Joan and her romance-skittish boyfriend, police detective Fred Lundquist are hard pressed to even figure out how the killer managed the murder without being seen let alone who in the cast did it.

Joan is well developed and shows sympathy and understanding for the new widow, as she had been there herself. I know this sounds so standard in books now, but Joan is an independent woman raising a teenage son and managing quiet well after the death of her minister husband. There are a few books that do an independent woman justice without being

READ THE REST OF THE REVIEW HERE:
http://mysterysuspence.blogspot.com/2010/01/review-murder-and-sullivan-by-sara.h... ( )