Sophie Greenway Series

A KILLER WAS FULLY COMMITTED

Twin Cities businessman Ken Loy is the first to die; shot between the eyes during a sunset bike ride. Half an hour later, Bob Fabian, the rich and handsome owner of the Minneapolis Times Register, meets a similar fate. It was a year ago when Loy broadsided the VW Beetle driven by Fabian’s wife, Valerie, killing her instantly. Coincidence? Sleuthing food critic Sophie Greenway doesn’t buy it.

Indeed, the elegant Rookery Club, where the upper crust gathers to drink, dine, and gossip, is already simmering with rumors–about the murders, about a Times Register reporter’s shameless fabrication of news stories, about rifts in two high-profile relationships. So when Sophie turns up the heat, the lethal bouillabaisse of twisted love, sadistic rage, and insatiable greed boils over. It seems that poisonous concoction murder du jour is back on the menu. . . .

DOUBLE MURDER, ON THE HOUSE

Far from being the idyllic home Carl Veelund envisioned when he built the grand mansion years ago, Prairie Lodge has become the keeper of many dark and terrible secrets. Now family members are dropping like flies: Two women are dead—and truths long hidden are about to be brought to light.

When restaurant reviewer-cum-sleuth Sophie Greenway stumbles upon an old diary, she has no idea it will toss her like a salad into the center of the tragedies unfolding at Prairie Lodge. It appears that being a dear friend to Carl’s daughter, Elaine, has become dangerous. For in a recipe that calls for murder, deceit, sibling rivalry, and old grudges that die hard, Sophie finds herself the main ingredient. . . .

RECIPE FOR MURDER

As Minnesota housewives race to meet the deadline for the Times Register’s meat loaf contest, an unsavory small-towner named Kirby Runbeck is blown to smithereens by a car bomb.

Days later, the town’s former mayor, John Washburn, near death from a stroke, confesses to the killing. His wife and two children vehemently deny it, but when Sophie Greenway, food maven and friend of the family, happens upon an old snapshot, a bundle of letters, and a tattoo of a red-eyed snake, she wonders about Washburn’s innocence. Unlike the recipe for a prize meat loaf, this murder is seasoned with spicy secrets and a generous portion of scandal, which Sophie dares to bring to a roiling boil. . . .

SERIAL MURDER

The yuletide revival of a vintage Twin Cities radio serial isn’t just for fun–dealing as it does with the scandalous unsolved 1950s murder of beautiful Kay Collins. But an even deeper mystery intrigues radio personality Bram Baldric and his sleuthing wife, Sophie Greenway: Why has the station’s owner insisted on airing this particular case when her son–Kay Collins’s two-timing lover–happened to have been the prime suspect in it? Merriment and mistletoe are out this Christmas; menace and murder are in.

The elegant Maxfield Plaza Hotel in downtown St. Paul is packed to the rafters with the powerbrokers of the charismatic Church of the Firstborn—and a national convention of the Daughters of Sisyphus.

Between the two gatherings, five old college roommates are reunited: food critic Sophie Greenway, now owner of the hotel; Adelle, who married into the founding family of the Firstborns; Lavinia, mastermind of the Daughters; and Bunny and Cindy, Lavinia’s top aides. But when a murderer terminates one of the gang, Sophie senses that not everyone is devastated by the loss.

As Sophie delicately probes the private affairs of her hotel’s star guests, she recalls another death—of a young woman who had been the group’s sixth roommate. The buried secrets of that long-ago death are exhumed as a clandestine killer once again commits the oldest sin.