Heaven Preserve Us
A
Home Crafting Mystery with Sophie Mae Reynolds
Cricket McRae
Midnight Ink (Trade Paperback)
ISBN-10: 0-7387-1122-5 (0738711225)
ISBN-13: 978-0-7387-1122-5 (9780738711225)
Publication Date: August 2008
List Price: $13.95
Synopsis (from
the publisher): A reputation as a small town busybody sleuth. A
gum-cracking boss who keeps calling her "babe." Now a suicidal phone
stalker? Great.
After solving the messy mystery of her neighborhood handyman's
lye-induced death, thirty-something Sophie Mae Reynolds makes preserves
by day and answers phones at a crisis center by night. What better way
to keep a low profile? But on her very first night, Sophie Mae gets a
call from a man who is threatening suicide . . . and her. Overhearing
the caller's irate outbursts, her morally bankrupt boss Philip Heaven
severs the line. As harassing calls to her home increase, Philip comes
down with a deadly case of food poisoning. And his eerie last words
keep ringing in Sophie Mae's ears: "Threat. Meant it." Now stirring up
the town with talk of murder-by-preserves, Sophie Mae and her hunky
boyfriend Detective Barr are on a blood-red trail of rancid beets to
find and stop the crafty killer.
Review:
In Cricket McRae's second home crafting mystery, Heaven Preserve Us,
soap maker and amateur sleuth Sophie Mae Reynolds investigates the
"death by natural causes" of a man who died in her arms, supposedly of
food poisoning.
Sophie Mae is volunteering her services to the Heaven House Helpline
(HHH, for short) where people in distress call for advice and help. It
appears, however, that just as much help is needed inside the HHH as on
her second day there, the night of the preserve exchange, Philip
Heaven, who created the foundation, falls gravely ill. Sophie Mae goes
to his assistance and while waiting for an ambulance he mutters to her,
"Threat. Meant it.” He dies the very next day. Although the
medical examiner rules the death natural due to a botulism toxin
brought on by eating tainted beets in some of the preserves, Sophie Mae
cannot get his last words out of her mind. So, as is her vigorous and
usual custom, she sets out to discover the source of the tainted beets.
The police, including her new boyfriend Detective Barr
Ambrose, who also becomes ill from the same beets, tell her to back off
but Sophie Mae is sure Philip was murdered. How could she convince the
police of what she believes to be true? And just who is the
stranger outside her window, watching her every move?
Sophie Mae is a confident woman with an appetite for mystery and Heaven Preserve Us
is a good one. The author shows that in Sophie Mae, one can find the
good in most people, young and old, and that she'd rather laugh than
cry when things beyond her control go wrong. The characters are
engaging, the story intriguing, and the book a pleasure to
read.
Special thanks to guest reviewer Betty of The Betz Review for contributing her review of Heaven Preserve Us and to Midnight Ink for providing a copy of the book for this review.
Review Copyright © 2008 — Hidden Staircase Mystery Books — All Rights Reserved.
Mysteries in this series ...
Lye
in Wait
Midnight Ink (Trade Paperback), October 2007
ISBN-10: 0-7387-1116-0 (0738711160)
ISBN-13: 978-0-7387-1116-4 (9780738711164)
Heaven
Preserve Us
Midnight Ink (Trade Paperback), May 2008
ISBN-10: 0-7387-1122-5 (0738711225)
ISBN-13: 978-0-7387-1122-5 (9780738711225)
Omnimystery keywords for Heaven Preserve Us
...
Location(s) referenced: Seattle, Washington.