A favor for a relative involves a poet and sleuth in yet another murder.
At 92, Victoria Trumbull (Trumpet of Death, 2017, etc.) has lived her whole life in a big old house on beautiful Martha’s Vineyard. When her distant cousin Penny Arbuthnot asked to hold her wedding there, Victoria agreed, but now she’s shocked to discover it’s a huge extravaganza with tents, sound systems, and more than 200 guests. And then the electrician wiring the ceremony finds a body wrapped in a sheet hanging in the seldom-used cellar. Though Penny and her fiance, Rocco Bufano, each think the other is wealthy, Penny’s maxed out her credit and Rocco’s been disowned by his father, Giovanni Bufano, whose Mafia connections make him dangerous. The murder victim, whom Rocco claims not to know, looks amazingly like Rocco himself, and Rocco worries that the man may have been killed by one of his own creditors as a warning to pay up. On the island for the wedding are Rocco’s brother, Dominic, who arrives at Victoria’s house dead drunk, and his two stepbrothers, Cosimo and Caesar. All the friends Rocco’s invited to fill out the groom’s side hate him, and they’re all planning his demise—though he’s such a narcissist that he has no idea so many people wish him dead. Since they all turn up at Victoria’s sooner or later, the police use her and the island’s gossip network as fonts of information while wondering if Rocco will escape death long enough for them to find the killer.
Riggs’ heroine has a smaller role than usual in an exciting and twisted tale of hatred and family honor that will keep you guessing until the end. — Kirkus Reviews
At the outset . . . 92-year-old Victoria Trumbull, a deputy in the West Tisbury police force, is preparing to host the wedding reception of her 25-year-old cousin, Penny Arbuthnot, when an electrician working in her house finds a body hanging from a beam in the cellar. Much of the plot revolves around discovering the identity of the deceased and resolving complicated relationships among the family of Penny’s fiancé, Rocco Bufano, who has a debt problem and knows someone wants to kill him. Forthright and down-to-earth Victoria, who exemplifies Yankee can-do practicality, steals the show. . . . — Publishers Weekly
If you expect wedding bells at Victoria Trumbull’s house for her distant cousin Penny Arbuthnot, you will be sorely disappointed. A dead body hanging in Victoria’s cellar is just the first hitch. The fact that Penny and her fiancé Rocco each mistakenly believe they are marrying into riches puts another kink in the wedding plans. . . .
For those who yearn for Victoria’s keen detective skills as a deputy of the West Tisbury police, she largely sits this one out. Instead, we are introduced to almost all the characters through their visits to her rambling house, which closely resembles the circa 1750 Cleaveland House that Riggs lives in herself, the eighth generation of her family to do so. Riggs also uses Victoria’s ponderings about the unfolding situation to help us try to make sense of what’s going on underneath all the comings and goings.
. . .
For those who know the Island, Riggs, as always, writes with great specificity about the Vineyard locations in which the tale takes place, so that it unfolds cinematically in the reader’s imagination. In Widow’s Wreath, some of the action takes place in West Tisbury and Edgartown, but particularly Oak Bluffs, where Riggs’ descriptive use of its labyrinth of small one-way streets around the Campground plays its own part in the story. — Abby Remer,Martha's Vineyard TimesREAD THE FULL REVIEW
Praise for
Trumpet of Death
Island author Cynthia Riggs has developed an improbable recipe for the success of her 13 Martha’s Vineyard Mysteries. Here’s the deal: Begin with a 92-year-old sleuth sniffing out murders on an Island where murders are more rare than a 60-pound striper. Add the insights of the author on real-life Island personalities, attitudes, and culture. Stir in a liberal dollop of knowledge of Island flora and fauna, and simmer. Update frequently with changing social mores and issues, and by God, you have a winner. Trumpet of Death, her latest, includes all those ingredients. Having read the majority of her thrillers, I find I anticipate the details of nature and environment liberally sprinkled through the pages as 92-year-old sleuth Victoria Trumbull makes sense of the mayhem.
We learn, as Ms. Trumbull navigates through two bodies, a full crew of suspects, and a brilliant Island fall season, how to make terrific baked beans, and the properties of the rare but succulent Trumpet of Death mushroom occasionally found here.
In all, it’s a generous read, particularly for folks familiar with the winding roads and manners of Island life, because you can put yourself in the scene, including the scene of the crime. . . . — Jack Shea, Martha's Vineyard Times READ THE FULL REVIEW
At the start of Riggs’s satisfying 13th Martha’s Vineyard mystery (after 2016’s Bloodroot), feisty 92-year-old Victoria Trumbull, a poet, takes her young and not-too-sharp upstairs tenant, Zack Zeller, on a nature walk. In the woods, she shows him some poisonous mushrooms [ed. note: They aren't poisonous, but Zack thinks they are] known as black trumpets (aka trumpets of death). Zack, who has a summer job as a dishwasher, has been loaning money to his spoiled girlfriend, Samantha Eberhardt, a drug user and dealer, who promises to pay him back but never does. When Zack breaks up with Sam, she threatens him. To get back at Sam, Zack gives her some of the deadly mushrooms in the hope they will sicken her, but things don’t go as planned. When Sam’s body turns up on a bike path, Zack isn’t the only murder suspect, since she may have had a hand in ruining a number of lives on the island. Fans of darker cozies will enjoy Riggs’s blend of crime, island lore, and well-drawn characters. — Publishers Weekly
Praise for
Bloodroot
In Riggs's agreeable 12th Martha's Vineyard mystery someone uses arsenic—easily available on the island—to poison the wealthy and unpleasant Mildred Wilmington while she's at the dentist. The dental clinic is a hotbed of lust, jealousy, and greed, but also under suspicion are the four grandchildren she helped raise and who are expected to do very well financially now that the old lady is gone. Since the police are busy preparing for a visit by the U.S. president, it’s up to 92-year-old deputy Victoria Trumbull to investigate. Fortunately, most people are willing to confide in Victoria, which helps her sort through the mess. Meanwhile, Lockwood, the duplicitous and dangerous former husband of Victoria's granddaughter Elizabeth, shows up on the Vineyard. Despite scads of evidence that Lockwood is no good, Victoria welcomes him. Maybe it's because she needs his help to unmask the killer.—Publishers Weekly
Think you don't enjoy your dental visits? Imagine how you'd feel if you didn't survive them! Victoria Trumbull, who's lived on Martha's Vineyard for her entire 92 years, knows all the permanent residents. She has a formidable reputation as a sleuth and even serves as a deputy. So when a murder occurs the week before a visit from the president, she's the logical person to investigate. Dr. Horace Mann, who owns the dental clinic, hates treating the demanding Mildred Wilmington. So do the clinic's other three dentists and their techs. . . . With so many suspects, it's bound to be hard to find the culprit. Riggs, who describes the beauties of her acerbic sleuth's island home as lovingly as ever, provides a more satisfying conclusion than usual this time around.—Kirkus Reviews
A mysterious drowning in Oak Bluffs harbor and the poisoning of an Island matriarch in a dentist’s chair set the stage for Cynthia Riggs’s 13th novel, Bloodroot . . . The Vineyard itself is an ever-present character in the novel. Even passing moments remind us of where we are: “Rain beat against the window. Wind rattled the ancient panes. The lilac scratched the shingles."
Driven mostly by dialogue, the story moves at a steady clip, with plot twists as quirky and unpredictable as the Island characters themselves. Along the way, readers get an inside glimpse of Island life — the bars, workplaces, waterfront properties and, most of all, the natural beauty that many of the characters, even those with bloody intentions, can appreciate.—Alex Ervin, Vineyard Gazette. READ THE FULL REVIEW
The author’s artistry is in the unfolding of plot and subplots that wind back on themselves like the bittersweet vine that abounds here. Ms. Riggs throws in subtext that resonates of Island life. For example, the U.S. president is coming for an annual vacation, and local police are run ragged with preparations. Also, Mrs. Trumbull’s granddaughter, Elizabeth, is watching her own back for the reappearance of her psychotic and obsessive ex, restraining order notwithstanding.
. . . Ms. Riggs tells her tales with nuance and detail that allow Island visitors to see how we act and feel. For residents, descriptions of scenes in these stories articulate the things we see on a daily basis and refreshes them for us. She draws delicious characters from Island residents we all know, either as real people or as types. There is an impish side to Ms. Riggs’ writing that can provide a thoughtful nod or a belly laugh. . . . Ms. Riggs has promised us 20 books, and Victoria is certainly spry enough for the work.—Jack Shea, Martha’s Vineyard Times. READ THE FULL REVIEW
When crotchety senior citizen Mildred Wilmington dies after collapsing in her dentist’s chair, few grieve. Not her four unpleasant grandchildren, together at Mildred’s home on Martha’s Vineyard for the first time in a decade. Not the staff of the dental clinic, who resent Mildred’s disdainful treatment of them. . . . All the suspects have motives — revenge and inheritance stand out — for Mildred’s death from arsenic poisoning. Riggs, a 13th-generation Islander in her mid-80s, is adept at fashioning an intriguing puzzle rendered in no-nonsense New England prose with particular respect for the abilities of the elderly. And she spins another good yarn.— Jay Strafford, Richmond Times-Dispatch
Mrs. Wilmington left a $3 million estate and four greedy heirs — her grandchildren, all of whom hated her. Any one or all of them could have planned the murder. But Victoria finds there is way more to the story than meets the eye, and it is up to her to find the killer. This cozy little mystery is filled with beautiful descriptions of the island as well as interesting characters.—The Oklahoman
Praise for From Off Island, by Dionis Coffin Riggs
This new edition of Dionis Riggs' From Off Island could not be more welcome.—David McCullough, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Truman and John Adams (1992)
From Off Island, by Dionis Coffin Riggs, offers a splendid historical account of the author's Australian grandmother at the height of America's whaling era—the Vineyard's golden years.—Richard Reston, former editor-publisher of the Vineyard Gazette (1992)
We are delighted with From Off Island—as everyone who loves Martha's Vineyard is bound to be. I think it is a grand book, and its appeal should be wide.—Henry Beetle Hough, Pulitzer Prize–winning author, former editor-publisher of the Vineyard Gazette (1940)
. . . a careful and affectionate reconstruction of the life of the author's grandmother . . . and engaging characters set off by a background picturesque in time and place . . .—Saturday Review of Literature (1940)
. . . full of good old-fashioned trouble solved in good old-fashioned ways . . .—Chicago Daily News (1940)
Praise for
Murder on C-Dock
Murder on C-Dock . . . is a chillingly fun read that introduces us to Persie Lee Butler, a 40-something Smithsonian researcher who lives aboard a houseboat in a tidal basin yacht club hard by the Capitol area in Washington, D.C. . . . As the murders and boat-burnings pile up, we see layers of personalities emerge and the secrets of live-aboards laid bare. Ms. Riggs-Attebery’s characters wrestle with grown-up stuff involving not only murder, but also incest, gay and lesbian partners dealing with homophobia, the corrosive effect of buried secrets, and revenge-seeking.
Ms. Riggs-Attebery’s characters are crisp and distinct and funky. They serve as an unexpected social counterpoint to our image of a gray D.C. corporate and government bureaucracy.—Jack Shea in the Martha's Vineyard TimesREAD THE FULL REVIEW
A motley group of characters live on houseboats, sailboats, and "just-about-floating boats" on C-Dock on the Washington Channel leading to the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers. Riggs-Attebery knows this life. She lived on a houseboat on the D.C. waterfront for twelve years and was a licensed captain leading tours on the Potomac. The reader soon learns the owners of the boats on C-Dock have histories to match their boats, most needing repair. One of the owners, Dojan Minnowfish, has been exiled from Martha's Vineyard for his behavior back home; followers of the author's Victoria Trumbull series will recognize his name. What the owners all have in common, however, is their dislike for Commodore Dunn.
The plot begins with a fatal fire on one of the boats and then slowly, deftly connects a number of people to the murder as a long history of life on the waterfront unfolds. The protagonist, Persie Lee Butler, a single mother and lab technician, harbors a secret, as do most of the residents; the secrets inevitably reveal more plot twists and murders. Darker, indeed, but an entirely different series, introducing an intriguing protagonist, taking the reader to another part of the country and way of life, and establishing another tightly knit community. — Kathleen Dowling, reprinted from Goodreads.
Praise for
Poison Ivy
In Ms. Riggs’ latest, Poison Ivy, we find Ms. Trumbull — part poet, part deputy sheriff — variously setting off in a sailboat in a violent storm, waiting it out on a stakeout, and even creeping through a field in the pitch dark to aid in the ultimate apprehension of the killer. . . . The twists and turns of the various plots hold the reader’s interest straight through to the apprehension of the murderer. But it’s really the details of Island life and the assemblage of interesting characters that make Ms. Riggs’ book a standout among other works of detective fiction. — Gwyn McAllister in the Martha's Vineyard Times READ THE FULL REVIEW
Praise for
Victoria Trumbull's Martha's Vineyard
"Mystery writer Cynthia Riggs' new guide book is
a real insider's guide to the Island." — Mathea
Morais on Martha's Vineyard Patch ...READ
THE FULL REVIEW
"Lynn Christoffers' photos and Stephen Wesley's maps
make this a true travel guide, while Riggs' text and poetry
choices add a literary air." — Melanie Lauwers,
CapeCodOnline.com ...READ
THE FULL REVIEW
"Using Victoria Trumbull, the protagonist of her
mystery book series set on the Vineyard, as the lynchpin,
Cynthia Riggs has created a where-to and how-to Island tour
book embellished with wonderful tidbits of Vineyard facts
and history, the poetry of her late mother, noted poet Dionis
Coffin Riggs (on whom the sleuth Trumbull is based), and
excerpts from her mysteries." — CK Wolfson
in MVTimes.com... READ
THE FULL REVIEW
"There's no better Vineyard guide than Cynthia Riggs
and her character, Victoria Trumbull." — Linda
Fairstein ...READ
THE FULL REVIEW
"Oh-oh. A pony tail? In the movies, that invariably
signals a bad guy. Will Orion be an exception? And what
about his permanently pleasant expression - could that mask
something deeper and darker? " — By Holly Nadler
in The Vineyard Gazette ...READ
THE FULL REVIEW
"Killers should steer clear of Martha's Vineyard
because senior sleuth Victoria Trumbull always finds out
who did the crime." — Valerie A. Russo in Patriot
Ledger ...READ
THE FULL REVIEW
"The Bee Balm Murders is another delightful
entry in Cynthia Riggs's Martha's Vineyard series."
— Linda Fairstein ...READ
THE FULL REVIEW
Praise for Touch-Me-Not
"The novel combines inverted detection and whodunit,
with involving characters and a well-realized Martha's Vineyard
background. " — Jon L. Breen in Ellery Queen
Mystery Magazine...READ
THE FULL REVIEW
"One should know by now never to underestimate Ms.
Riggs. Educated as a geologist, she taught at the Annapolis
Sailing School, lived on a 44-foot houseboat for 12 years
while running the Chesapeake Bay Ferry Boat Company, was
a rigger at Martha's Vineyard Shipyard, and in her late
60s, she earned an MFA in creative writing from Vermont
College, and has, in each ensuing year, produced one of
the Vineyard-based, Victoria Trumbull mysteries. Well done."
— The Martha's Vineyard Times...READ
THE FULL REVIEW
"Filled with charming descriptions of life on Martha's
Vineyard - particularly its natural beauty - and graced
with the presence of an admirable and amiable heroine, Riggs'
series continues to delight." — Richmond Times
Dispatch...READ
THE FULL REVIEW
"Riggs's delightful ninth Martha's Vineyard mystery...
a cozy that celebrates the springtime beauty of the island
as well as its quirky, endearing residents..." —
Publishers Weekly...READ
THE FULL REVIEW
Praise for Death
and Honesty
"Death and Honesty is a witty amalgam of characters
inhabiting a plot designed for the slightly unhinged reader
who loves wit, lots of plot twists and a little heady confusion..."
— The Barnstable Patriot...READ
THE FULL REVIEW
"Join Victoria in a cozy mystery that is well plotted,
filled with humor and substance that will take you to the
beach. A well-written cozy is a welcome break for the deluge
of heavy chiller-thrillers..." — Nash Black
in Bird's Eye View Book Reviews...READ
THE FULL REVIEW
"Islanders with oddities and old fashioned ways such
as making jellied candies from island berries, raising chickens
and goats, and quarrelling with neighbors over an out of
control rooster that crows morning, noon and night..."
— The Quill...READ
THE FULL REVIEW
"The first body that turns up is one of three town
assessors involved in overcharging rich property owners
to feather their own retirement nests." — Hartford
Courant...READ
THE FULL REVIEW
"There's a body in the pantry, a body in the pond
and a body in the attic. And here to investigate is Victoria
Trumbull, the intrepid 92-year-old heroine of Cynthia Riggs'
series set on Martha's Vineyard." — Richmond
Times-Dispatch...READ
THE FULL REVIEW
"A great beach read on a Vineyard vacation is Death
and Honesty, a Martha’s Vineyard murder mystery involving
a trio of crooked assessors and their accomplices ..."
— The Patriot Ledger...READ
THE FULL REVIEW
"Victoria Trumbull, indomitable 92-year-old deputy
police officer and poet, investigates smalltown skulduggery
in Riggs’s engaging eighth Martha’s Vineyard mystery."
— Publishers Weekly ...READ
THE FULL REVIEW
"This time the hanky-panky begins in the town hall,
with three crooked assessors, whose names Ms. Riggs says
are based on the harpies in Greek myth, and their weaseling
clerk, who is also the tax collector. Add a wealthy former
porn queen married to a nasty TV evangelist, a mysterious
chauffeur, and, of course, a few murders, and you're off
down a twisting up-Island labyrinth full of puzzles, dead
ends, and humorous surprises." — The Martha's
Vineyard Times ...READ
THE FULL REVIEW
Praise for Shooting
Star
"Riggs's pleasing seventh Martha's Vineyard mystery
finds her 92-year-old heroine, Victoria Trumbull, a poet
and deputy police officer, becoming a playwright for a summertime
stage adaptation of Frankenstein." — Publishers
Weekly ...READ
THE FULL REVIEW
"Everyone is depicted in colorful broad strokes—drunken
director, amiable local police, bright-eyed teens—and
Victoria manages to feed and house most of them as well
as solve mayhem and heartbreak." — Booklist...READ THE FULL
REVIEW
"The seventh Martha's Vineyard mystery thriller is
a fun lighthearted tale that fans of the series will fully
enjoy." — Harriet Klausner ...READ
THE FULL REVIEW
Praise for Indian
Pipes
"There are many levels on which to enjoy Cynthia
Riggs's latest mystery... But it is the prose that makes
the book sing." — The Martha's Vineyard Times
...READ THE FULL
REVIEW
"People are so nice in West Tisbury that even the
villains seem less than evil — more like seriously
naughty." — The New York Times ...READ
THE FULL REVIEW
"Lovely descriptions of the Vineyard in the fall,
plenty of suspenseful action and a cast of eccentric supporting
characters, including the bikers' tough college professor
leader, help make this another winner." — Publishers
Weekly...READ
THE FULL REVIEW
"Victoria's official position, validated by the hat
she now wears that reads, "West Tisbury, Police Deputy,"
has given her too much confidence, and she takes chances
that horrify her boss" — St. Martin's Minotaur...READ THE FULL REVIEW
Praise for
The Paperwhite Narcissus
"In addition to the usual colorful supporting cast
of West Tisbury eccentrics, Riggs introduces an utterly
charming new character, the grumbly William Botts. "
— Booklist...READ
THE FULL REVIEW
"When Colley Jameson, the harried, hard-drinking
editor of the Island Enquirer, refuses to reinstate Victoria
Trumbull's weekly column, even after the 92-year-old sheriff's
deputy saves his life when his tie gets stuck in a printing
press, Victoria offers her services elsewhere in Riggs's
delightful fifth Martha's Vineyard mystery" —
Publishers Weekly...READ
THE FULL REVIEW
"A delightfully cozy read, steeped in rich characters
and a sense of place, this latest Victoria Trumbull mystery
is sure to charm long-time fans and first-time readers."
— St. Martin's Minotaur...READ
THE FULL REVIEW
Praise for
Jack in the Pulpit
"Cynthia Riggs delivers one of the those rare novels
that manages to combine a great story with a descriptive
writing style...If you love to read, and you love to read
a good detective/murder-mystery, then this book is for you."
— Dan Blankenship, author of The Running Girl
...READ THE FULL
REVIEW
"A sensitive observer of the scene, Riggs writes
with warmth and humor about all-too-human characters with
whom readers can readily identify." — Publishers
Weekly...READ THE
FULL REVIEW
"In this fourth installment in her Victoria Trumbull
series, Riggs offers a kind of prequel that explains why
Victoria's granddaughter, Elizabeth, first came to live
with her 92-year-old grandmother, and how Victoria became
a deputy for the West Tisbury police." — by Jenny
McLarin in Booklist...READ
THE FULL REVIEW
"Victoria's boundless energy makes Jack in the Pulpit,
Cynthia Riggs's fourth Martha's Vineyard mystery, a page-turner."
— by Helen Phillips in The Vineyard Gazette...READ THE FULL
REVIEW
Praise
for The Cemetery Yew
"I stayed with the book until THE END, stopping neither
to feed the cat nor turn on the evening alarms!" —
by T.J. Straw in Mystery Reviews...READ
THE FULL REVIEW
"[Riggs'] knowledge of Martha's Vineyard shines in
the expert evocation of the picturesque community. As satisfying
as a steaming bowl of chowder on a cold New England evening."
— by Jenny McLarin in Booklist...READ
THE FULL REVIEW
"Victoria Trumbull, the astute, 92-year-old Vineyard
native and deputy police officer, takes on her most bizarre
case yet, in Riggs's third appealing Vineyard mystery ."
— Publishers Weekly...READ
THE FULL REVIEW
"Victoria is the most realistic and the most delightful
nonagenarian in mystery fiction. Her years have not blunted
her intelligence and her sharp wit." — St.
Martin's Minotaur...READ
THE FULL REVIEW
Praise for the The
Cranefly Orchid Murders
"Victoria Trumbull, a 92-year-old Martha's Vineyard
native, deputy police officer and naturalist, continues
to delight in this second outing (after 2001's Deadly Nightshade)
from Vineyard native Riggs." — Publishers Weekly...READ THE FULL
REVIEW
"The second appearance of 92-year-old Victoria Trumbull,
amateur sleuth, upholds the promise of her first in Deadly
Nightshade. Here, she and her young assistant look for a
scarce plant that might provide clues to the murder of a
local attorney. A great story." — Library Journal
"Plucky 92-year-old Victoria Trumbull is back on
the case in this satisfying follow-up to Riggs' series premiere,
Deadly Night shade. This time she is trailing both a killer
and a rare orchid. "
— by Jenny McLarin in Booklist...READ
THE FULL REVIEW
"Riggs . . .knows the Island—its flora, fauna,
families, legends, customs and rumors—so well that
every pace she puts her senior sleuth through becomes another
delightful discovery." — Book Page
"The author is well aware of the comedy involving
people who take themselves seriously, and adds a nice satiric
touch when describing the utopians, the environmentalists,
the developers, the big-wigs and the would-be bigwigs. Once
again, Ms. Riggs' knowledge of the Island and its people
serves her and her readers well." — The Martha's
Vineyard Times
"Riggs is not afraid to describe elderly poet Victoria
Trumbull realistically—wrinkles and all . . . first-rate
plotting . . . wonderful cast of characters . . In addition
to the endearing, yet never sentimentalized Victoria, the
supporting figures are uniformly compelling and thoroughly
believable. . . here's hoping Victoria Trumbull is solving
crimes for many years to come." — ALA Booklist
"To keep eager developers off Martha's Vineyard,
poet-detective Victoria Trumbull searches for loopholes—and
finds a patch of endangered cranefly orchids. But she also
discovers one of the developers' underhanded lawyers pushing
up daisies. And if Victoria isn't careful, a killer might
take her off the endangered list-and make her extinct."
— St. Martin's Minotaur
Praise for Deadly
Nightshade
"This unabridged reading of the author?s first Martha?s
Vineyard mystery (originally published in 2001) introduces
that most endearing and unlikely of sleuths, ninety-two-year-old
Victoria Trumbull... The narrator, with her range of voices
and grasp of natural speech patterns, is ideal for this
leisurely paced tale." — by Edward Morris
in ForeWord Magazine...READ
THE FULL REVIEW
"[A] well-written mystery, with a host of very believable-as
well as some very eccentric-characters...For a first novel,
this one is quite special." — Mystery News
"[A] well-written mystery, with a host of very believable-as
well as some very eccentric-characters...For a first novel,
this one is quite special." — Mystery News
"Riggs shows her gift for characterizations that
will have her audience clamoring for an ongoing series at
least until Victoria turns one hundred." — Midwest
Book Review
"First-rate plotting notwithstanding, it is Riggs's
wonderful cast of characters that brings her novel to life
. . Here's hoping Victoria Trumbull is solving crimes for
many years to come." — ALA Booklist
"Feisty, fiercely independent nonagenarian Victoria
Trumbull makes a welcome debut in Riggs's first novel ...
The book's dedicatee, Donis Coffin Riggs (1898-1997), native
Vineyarder and poet, would seem to be the model for Victoria.
Everyone should have such a terrific grandmother."
— Publisher's Weekly
When traveling somewhere new, there is a definite
difference between going as a tourist and staying in the home
of a local resident who tells you all the best restaurants,
walks and events that you just can't miss.
Now, some may argue that you cannot get the
same effect from reading a guidebook as you can from knowing
a local, but there is a new book out this month that may make
you take up that argument. Victoria Trumbull's Martha's Vineyard
Guide Book, is co-created by mystery writer Cynthia Riggs,
photographer Lynn Christoffers and cartographer Stephen (Step)
Wesley, and is as close as you'll get to having one of the
Island's elders lead you by the hand without, well, having
an Island elder lead you by the hand.
Add to that argument that this book is based
on the world surrounding the fictitious Victoria Trumbull,
the 92-year-old-poet-sleuth and protagonist of Riggs' mysteries
and you'll really have them stumped. "I came up with
this idea about two years ago," said Cynthia Riggs when
we met in her brightly lit breakfast room in her 300 year
old home last week. "Originally, I didn't want to be
the one to write it. I don't think of myself as a tour book
writer." But after attempts at having someone else write
it, Riggs said she knew she had to be the one to do it.
Riggs and Christoffers are neighbors and Wesley,
who was with the Inkwell Bookstore in Falmouth, became friends
with Riggs while doing events for her books. Add to that combination
Janet Holladay of Tisbury Printer, who did the final design,
and two years later you've got a guidebook beautiful and thorough
enough to do this Island justice.
"Victoria Trumbull is based on my mother,"
said Riggs, whose mother, Dionis Coffin Riggs was a poet,
author, newspaper columnist and civic leader who was born
on Martha's Vineyard and who died there at the age of 98.
"Janet (Holladay) is a fan of my mother, she designed
all of the books we did for my mother and she's also a poet.
And she's also a genius." The book design is set up so
that you feel like you're about to embark on an adventure
with the wise and daring Mrs. Trumbull. Interspersed with
the maps, tours and photographs, the book is peppered with
Island tidbits like: What is a Pinkletink? And what is Up-Island?
Then there are Dionis's poems, sometimes in full and sometimes
just a stanza or two.
There are a total of six tours in the book:
Tour One: Vineyard Haven to Up-Island; Tour Two: West Chop;
Tour Three: West Tisbury; Tour Four: Oak Bluffs; Tour Five:
Vineyard Haven to Edgartown and Tour Six: Chappaquiddick.
There are also chapters dedicated to "special places"
like: Waskosim's Rock; Quansoo; Sepiessa Point and The Cleaveland
House. Along the way, readers are reminded to look out for
particular landmarks that appear in Riggs' mysteries and anecdotes
that relate back to her books. In Tour Three: West Tisbury,
Riggs writes, "The Howes House is considerably more than
a senior center. Some community activity is happening there
every weekday, including yoga, a writers group, computer lessons
and Scrabble games. The West Tisbury Board of Selectmen held
its weekly meetings there before the Town Hall was renovated
and numerous town meetings still convene there. It was in
the parking lot behind the Howes House that Victoria Trumbull
backed into the Meals on Wheels van in Jack in the Pulpit,
in a series of scrapes that led to the loss of her driver's
license."
Even Riggs, who said she thought she knew the Vineyard well
before writing this, learned a few things. "I found out
that the original name for Music Street was Cow Turd Lane,"
she said laughing. Whether you are a Victoria Trumbull fan
or you've never read a single one of Riggs' mysteries, you
will learn Island history, go down the most beautiful dirt
roads and visit each corner of the Island. "I included
places to go if you're coming here for a long weekend, or
if you're here for a month. If you've never been here, but
read the books, what are the high spots? What are some of
the quirky things that you'd encounter along the way? This
tour book is not comprehensive, but it does give you a feeling
of the Vineyard," said Riggs.
The photographs, taken by Lynn Christoffers, offer the perfect
compliment to each tour and special place. Far from being
the standard high-summer landscapes, these photographs feature
lone Lagoon rowboats, windswept winter dunes and late autumn
walking paths. It is the Island of Victoria Trumbull and so
it is the Island all year long.
With mileage clocked with the precision of a
GPS that knows which roads are one way and which ones dead
end, readers can follow the tours street by street or follow
the "Chart of Martha's Vineyard Prepared for Victoria
Trumbull Island Sleuth by Step Wesley," that includes
all Island landmarks, including Victoria Trumbull's house
- which is actually The Cleaveland House where Riggs now lives
and runs the B&B her mother started.
According to Riggs, "We decided to self-publish
because I have experience with it. I published all of my mother's
books through Cleaveland House Books and my father, who wrote
a wonderful book called Arrows and Snakeskin, in 1963
that was published by Little Brown, I reprinted through Tisbury
Printer and now it's used as a textbook at Westchester Community
College.
"The reason that self publishing has a
bad reputation is because the books are not carefully edited.
Plus, one of the times that self publishing works is when
books are highly local and this is definitely a local book."
Already, half of the first print run has been
sold. "The whole thing is very exciting," she said.
"I wrote emails to all my B&B guests and they've
all ordered a book. I keep all my fan emails (she gets about
four a week) and sent a mass email to all those people, many
of who have also ordered books. I've gotten all these neat
letters back telling me things like, 'Cleaveland House is
exactly what I pictured Victoria Trumbull's house to look
like.'
In the Introduction, the author notes: "This
book, Victoria Trumbull's Martha's Vineyard, is not a comprehensive
guidebook. It's an insider's glimpse of the Island, seen through
Victoria Trumbull's (and my) eyes, a series of tours and special
places mentioned in the mysteries, of personal anecdotes,
of odd Vineyard stories, of how we got our names like pinkletinks
and beetlebung trees..."
And she explains: "Hitchhiking is considered
environmentally sound on the Island. Saves gas and you meet
interesting people."
Using Victoria Trumbull, the protagonist of
her mystery book series set on the Vineyard, as the lynchpin,
Cynthia Riggs has created a where-to and how-to Island tour
book embellished with wonderful tidbits of Vineyard facts
and history, the poetry of her late mother, noted poet Dionis
Coffin Riggs (on whom the sleuth Trumbull is based), and excerpts
from her mysteries.
From "Touch Me Not:" "There
was a blue flash from the bedroom, a loud snap and the smell
of singed wires. Nancy popped out of her bedroom, towel askew.
'I'm so sorry, Mrs. Trumbull.'
'You don't need hairdryers on Martha's Vineyard,'
said Victoria with some asperity. 'There's a good west wind.
We don't waste electricity.'"
In combination with a collection of Lynn Christoffers's evocative
photographs of Island vistas, people, and the visual details
that tell a charming story (possibly her best body of work
to date), and Stephen Wesley's drawn maps, "Victoria
Trumbull's Martha's Vineyard Guide Book" is as good a
read as it is useful.
It's what one has come to expect from Ms. Riggs, a 13th generation
Islander whose ancestry includes Benjamin Franklin. She is
a staunch community activist familiar with the Island's traditions
and rhythms, as well as having intimate knowledge of its nooks
and crannies - all of which infuses the guidebook with its
tone and personality.
"After a storm, the runoff from the red clay in the
cliffs tinges the water blood red. According to Wampanoag
legend, the giant Moshup caught a whale by its tail, and the
red in the water is the whale's blood. Moshup Trail is named
for him."
The guidebook is divided into six tours and four special
places - Waskosim's Rock, Quansoo, Sepiessa Point, and Ms.
Riggs' West Tisbury home, The Cleaveland House, a historic
bed-and-breakfast catering to writers. There is also a chapter
on Island-grown plants.
For every destination, detailed directions are provided,
mentioning landmarks along the way, what lines the roads,
where to park, of what to take note. There are suggestions
for the hiker, biker, and boater. Ms. Riggs informs readers
that there are no poisonous snakes on the Vineyard, advises
hikers to wear long pants and sock to protect against ticks,
gives the history of the Island's old stone walls, and warns
those who might want to wade in Sepiessa to be careful not
to step on the sharp oyster shells.
In Tour One: Vineyard Haven to Up-Island, the reader is taken
to Tashmoo Overlook and learns that this is where Trumbull
discussed academic politics with her student. Ms. Riggs provides
the mileage from there to Tisbury Meadow, then on to West
Tisbury, and the sprawling 200-year-old tree, Liberty Oak,
at the North Road junction. She adds the one-upmanship boasts
of those who find treasures at the West Tisbury Dumptique,
leads the reader to Chilmark, explains that in the mid-1800s
one in 25 residents there were deaf, and provides some history.
She even makes reference to Chilmark Chocolates explaining
in "Indian Pipes," "Trumbull smells the fragrance
of Chilmark Chocolates as her kidnappers drive past and thus
is able to identify the route they took to their hideaway
on the Vineyard's north shore."
The book's 177 pages are chock-full of beautiful images,
fascinating details, and practical information on where to
go to fully experience the Vineyard.
Vineyarders, like most people in most towns and cities, tend
to travel their own well-trod paths, creating deep ruts to
their routine destinations. Many up-Islanders have never dipped
their toes into the waters of Tashmoo. Many down-Islanders
have never explored Lobsterville or Menemsha Village. "Victoria
Trumbull's Martha's Vineyard Guide Book" is as much for
them as it is for Island visitors. Whether the reader is an
armchair traveler or a backpacking cyclist, Cynthia Riggs's
guidebook makes a perfect Island traveling companion.
Martha's Vineyard resident Cynthia Riggs is
the author of a dozen murder mysteries and daughter of the
late poet Dionis Coffin Riggs. Now, Cynthia Riggs has combined
portions of her mother's poems with "tours" of various areas
of the island, stopping at places noted in her mother's work
or in her own mysteries. Lynn Christoffers' photos and Stephen
Wesley's maps make this a true travel guide, while Riggs'
text and poetry choices add a literary air. This is an unusual
compilation but, for Vineyard lovers, one they will want to
put to good use.
She's
got the Island's DNA in her genes A Review of Victoria
Trumbull's Martha's Vineyard
by Linda Fairstein, author of the Alex Cooper crime series
There's no better Vineyard guide than Cynthia
Riggs and her character, Victoria Trumbull. She's got the
Island's DNA in her genes, knows all the history as well as
its mystery, and creates a spellbinding tour of my favorite
place on earth.
Cynthia
Riggs has done it again! A Review of Victoria
Trumbull's Martha's Vineyard
by Nancy Slonim Aronie, Author of Writing from the Heart,
Founder of Chilmark Writing Workshop
Cynthia Riggs has done it again! With her distilled,
straightforward powerful use of language, her delicious dry
sense of humor, her rich irresistible characters (real this
time), she has written the ultimate tour of her magical, mystical
Martha's Vineyard. You will want to go on his trip with this
brilliant and oh-so-funny guide and take everone you love
with you.
Oh-oh.
A pony tail? A Review of The Bee
Balm Murders
by Holly Nadler in The Vineyard Gazette
To stay 92 forever isn't exactly the fountain
of youth. Yet our famed Island mystery writer Cynthia Riggs,
far younger herself, has produced the 10th entry in her Victoria
Trumbull series, this one called The Bee Balm Murders, and
her protagonist, elderly poet, gardener, deputy police officer
and amateur sleuth, continues to be the nonagenarian she was
in the debut novel, Deadly Nightshade. And you know what?
Ms. Riggs makes 92 look like the age to which we all might
aspire.
Evelyn Waugh wrote about P.G. Woodhouse's books, "[His]
idyllic world can never stale. He will continue to release
future generations from captivity that may be more irksome
than our own. He has made a world for us to live in and delight
in."
Ms. Riggs with her mysteries, all of which feature a poisonous
specimen of flora or fauna in her titles and plots, widens
her fan base with readers who love to wander in Victoria Trumbull's
world. Oh, Victoria's aches and pains sometimes catch up with
her. When she kneels to harvest potatoes in her vegetable
garden, she pulls herself up by her rake handle. In Bee Balm
Murders, she finds an engorged deer tick on her stomach and,
sure enough, the bull's eye rash that we all live in fear
of, develops. The aged detective is further hampered by a
debilitating course of antibiotics. And yet we trust that
she's still on her game.
A sideline and embellishment to the story is the installation
on Victoria's West Tisbury acres of seven bee hives, all of
them managed by Sean McBride, professional beekeeper. We learn
on the first page, "Each hive had twenty thousand bees.
Each of the twenty thousand bees had a specific job to perform
for the hive. During its short life, each of the nectar-gathering
bees produced an eighth of a teaspoon of honey. And each lived
only two weeks, its wings worn out from forays in search of
nectar-bearing blossoms."
Can you stop reading with an introduction as engrossing as
that one? You cannot!
Meanwhile, Ms. Riggs has assembled a cast of characters more
colorful and diverse than any she has placed before us in
the past, and this is over and above the twenty thousand bees
times seven. First there is Orion Nanopoulos, a new boarder
with an ingenious plan to embed a fiber-optic cable clear
across the Island. Right away a dead body turns up in one
of his muddy trenches: It's Angelo Vulpone, a potential investor
in Orion's company and, just incidentally, an alleged mob
boss.
Victoria takes an immediate dislike to vampy, middle-aged
Dorothy Roche, who's renting a fancy, sterile captain's house
on North Water street in Edgartown. Everyone is "darling"
to Dorothy, and she wears too much perfume. We know from our
long association with the all-natural Victoria that manufactured
scents - cologne, hair spray, fancy hand-milled soaps - put
her at a distance from the character who wafts them through
the rooms.
It looks as if Dorothy is trying to horn in on Orion's project,
and so is her fat, nasty, foul-mouthed boyfriend - and brother
to the corpse in the trench - Basilio Vulpone, a producer
of vampire movies. There is also a young investor-wannabe,
Finney Solomon, whose resume is more padded than a UPS-shipped
Ming vase. We dislike him immediately when he's newly arrived
on Island, fetched at the ferry by Dorothy's chauffeur, and
never once does he glance up from his laptop as he's whisked
along the causeway, Nantucket Sound on his left, Sengekontacket
on his right.
The dead man's sons show up, Primo and Umberto, hoping to
enlist Victoria to find their dad's killer. Are they as prince-charming
wholesome as they seem, or are they maneuvering to take over
Angelo's crime syndicate?
We have some off-Island scenes of Basilio's wife, Maria Rosa
and the "infidelity specialist" she hires to find
out why her unpleasant husband often goes missing. When she
learns the answer, we're pulling for her to let him go all-the-way
missing.
And then there are the recurring roles we've come to love:
Casey the chief-of-police and Victoria's best friend just
down the road; Elizabeth, our sleuth's doting niece, and all
the Vineyard folk encountered along the way; just like all
of us who live here year-round, Ms. Trumbull knows everyone
else who lives here year-round. In Bee Balm Murders, however,
it seems to be the washashores doing all the harm. Plus the
bees: Victoria's affable tenant and new best friend, Orion,
is allergic to them. He has an EpiPen in the glove compartment
of his old car.
Ms. Riggs has a talent for summing up a character in a tidy,
impression-stamping paragraph: "She watched as a white-haired,
mustached, deeply tanned man climbed out. In his 50s, perhaps,
but she wasn't good at ages. The man gave the side of his
car a pat, as though it was a horse that had delivered him
safely to her door. His trim body and mustache gave him the
look of a cavalry officer; at least from the front. When he
turned, his long, white ponytail altered the effect. He was
wearing jeans, an open-necked short-sleeved blue shirt and
worn, highly polished engineer's boots."
Oh-oh. A pony tail? In the movies, that invariably signals
a bad guy. Will Orion be an exception? And what about his
permanently pleasant expression - could that mask something
deeper and darker?
In the Victoria Trumbull mysteries, the plot twists and character
revelations keep coming. Open this new saga with a caveat:
You'll be winched to your chair until you finish. Make sure
you have plenty of snacks on hand and favorite beverages.
Cynthia Riggs is a 13th generation Islander who lives on
her family's homestead which she runs as a bed and breakfast,
catering to poets and writers. She has a degree in geology
from Antioch College and a master's degree in creative writing
from Vermont College. A descendent of sea captains, she herself
holds a U.S. Coast Guard Master's License.
The Bee Balm Murders is available at the Bunch of Grapes
Bookstore in Vineyard Haven, Edgartown Books, and The Secret
Garden in Oak Bluffs.
Bee
Careful A Review of The Bee
Balm Murders
by Valerie A. Russo for Patriot Ledger
Killers should steer clear of Martha's Vineyard
because senior sleuth Victoria Trumbull always finds out who
did the crime. Read how the spry 92-year-old cracks the latest
case involving beehives, fiber optic cables and shady investers
in The Bee Balm Murders, the 10th Martha's Vineyard
Mystery by author Cynthia Riggs of West Tibsbury.
Another
delightful entry in the Martha's Vineyard series A Review of The Bee
Balm Murders
by Linda Fairstein
The Bee Balm Murders is another delightful
entry in Cynthia Riggs's Martha's Vineyard series. Victoria
Trumbull—my favorite senior sleuth—is back in action,
keeping my beloved Island safe from deadly intruders, and
making it ever so much more interesting and fun.
Darkly
comic machinations to cover up A Review of Touch-Me-Not
by Jon L. Breen in The Jury Box, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine
The ninth case for 92-year-old Victoria Trumbull,
police deputy in a small Massachusetts town, involves stalking,
electronic voyeurism, quilting, and a case of manslaughter
that a local electrician goes through sometimes darkly comic
machinations to cover up. The novel combines inverted detection
and whodunit, with involving characters and a well-realized
Martha's Vineyard background.
Expresses
much of the year-round Island style and culture A Review of Touch-Me-Not
by C.K. Wolfson
The Martha's Vineyard Times
Cynthia Riggs, West Tisbury's own town and Island
activist, and innkeeper, is close to the halfway point of
her goal of writing 20 books since "Deadly Nightshade,"
the first in her Martha's Vineyard Mystery series, was published
in 2001.
Similar to the others, her ninth and most polished novel,
"Touch-Me-Not" (her novels are cryptically named
after flowers), is set on the Vineyard, and expresses much
of the year-round Island style and culture. While the events
and characters are all fictitious, it's impossible for an
Islander not to find recognizable aspects — composites
of neighbors and of almost-but-not-quite news-making Island
landmarks, happenings, and details: moped accidents, movie
nights at the West Tisbury Library, the Chappy ferry, fishing
at Wasque, the prevalence of hitchhiking, and when one character
asks what she should wear to dinner, she is told, "Clean
jeans."
"Touch-Me-Not" (flower is a natural antidote for
poison ivy) begins quietly with typical Vineyard routines:
A guest in an old house blows a fuse using her hairdryer.
Popular Island electrician LeRoy Watts is summoned; can't
be fixed in a single visit. But then, LeRoy is having a tough
time, being blackmailed by Jerry Sparks, a former employee,
and accidentally tasers him to death and hides the body in
West Tisbury's library's book shed. There are scandals, a
mysterious obscene caller, another murder, and an ecological
quilting contest to come.
Ms. Riggs, a 13th-generation Islander, daughter of poet Dionis
Riggs, runs a bed and breakfast catering to poets and writers
in her 1700s family homestead, The Cleaveland House. She created
and hosted a local television show, and has been a candidate
for several West Tisbury town posts and served on Island and
town boards, so she's collected first-hand insights to the
way the Island operates. Her authenticity is reflected on
every page, making her writing rich with the eccentric and
wonderful interactions Islanders take for granted.
The well-woven plots and subplots are character driven, and
the series's protagonists are all strong, independent, and
resourceful women led by the 92-year old sleuth Victoria Trumbull
(patterned after Ms. Riggs's mother, active until her death
at 98); Victoria's granddaughter, dockmaster Elizabeth; and
West Tisbury Police Chief Casey O'Neill.
In "Touch-Me-Not," the women in a knitting group
making a three-dimensional statement against global warming
are being harassed by a heavy-breathing telephone caller.
At the same time this is revealed, Victoria and Chief O'Neill
are trying to track down the missing Mr. Sparks, only to realize
there is a murder to solve.
And then there are the family issues that arise. For Victoria,
it comes in the person of her daughter, Amelia (Elizabeth's
mother), who comes from California to see if Victoria is capable
of independent living.
While the book is a quick read — Ms. Riggs's wicked
sense of humor plays well against her crafted moments of suspense
— the characters own their moments. She has clearly honed
her skills as an author, and does not rush the telling. It
is well-paced, taking time for the nuances, quirky asides,
and descriptions that draw in her readers:
"The air smelled of fresh green growth. A catbird mewed
from the cedar tree. Four polka-dotted guinea fowl strutted
past them, the hen calling out a tiresome, "Go back!
Go back! Go back! Go back!" until Victoria hurled a clump
of grass at her and the hen scurried off. Redwing blackbirds
called. The honey bees from Neal Flynn's hives hummed in the
wisteria."
One should know by now never to underestimate Ms. Riggs.
Educated as a geologist, she taught at the Annapolis Sailing
School, lived on a 44-foot houseboat for 12 years while running
the Chesapeake Bay Ferry Boat Company, was a rigger at Martha's
Vineyard Shipyard, and in her late 60s, she earned an MFA
in creative writing from Vermont College, and has, in each
ensuing year, produced one of the Vineyard-based, Victoria
Trumbull mysteries. Well done.
Victoria
is on the hunt A Review of Touch-Me-Not
Richmond Times-Dispatch
Don't call author Cynthia Riggs (born in 1931)
elderly. And don't aim that label at her 92-year-old sleuth,
Victoria Trumbull, either.
In "Touch-Me-Not" (272 pages, Minotaur Books, $24.99),
Victoria, a quasi-deputy sheriff on Martha's Vineyard, faces
a number of questions.
First, electrician LeRoy Watts accidentally
kills his no-account, blackmailing former employee, Jerry
Sparks, by firing a Taser gun at him. Stunned by what he has
done, Watts hides the body.
Meanwhile, a number of women in an island knitting
group report receiving stalker-type phone calls. As if that's
not enough, another violent death takes place, and Victoria
is on the hunt.
Filled with charming descriptions of life on
Martha's Vineyard - particularly its natural beauty - and
graced with the presence of an admirable and amiable heroine,
Riggs' series continues to delight.
Möbius
strips and Klein bottles A Review of Touch-Me-Not
Publishers Weekly
Near the start of Riggs's delightful ninth Martha's
Vineyard mystery featuring 92-year-old sleuth Victoria Trumbull
(after 2009's Death and Honesty), electrician LeRoy Watts
shoots his former assistant, Jerry Sparks, with a Taser after
Jerry confronts him in his Oak Bluffs office and threatens
blackmail. Jerry drops to the floor dead. Moments before LeRoy's
nine-year-old twin sons burst in the door from baseball practice,
he stuffs Jerry in the office closet.
Later, LeRoy takes the body to a book storage
shed at the West Tisbury library, where the "mathematical"
knitters (they do Möbius strips and Klein bottles) are
working on a special coral reef quilt to raise awareness of
global warming. One of the women in the knitting group asks
Victoria for help because she's been receiving obscene phone
calls. A second murder raises the stakes in a cozy that celebrates
the springtime beauty of the island as well as its quirky,
endearing residents.
For
the slightly unhinged reader who loves wit, lots of plot twists
and a little heady confusion A Review of Death
and Honesty
by Barbara Clark
Staff Review in The Barnstable Patriot
After finishing Death and Honesty, I find that
I really like the way Cynthia Riggs handles her literary creation
– 92-year-old sleuth Victoria Trumbull, who’s the
central character in the author’s Martha’s Vineyard
Mystery series.
While Victoria may be notable among fictional detectives
for her somewhat advanced age, Riggs concedes her nothing,
nor does she try to flatter. Instead of emphasizing Victoria’s
chronological age and thus patronizing her or, conversely,
inventing some unusual reason why we should pay attention
to someone who’s that old, Riggs simply lets Victoria
stand on her own merits, which turn out to be considerable.
She’s an erstwhile poet who’s also a deputy with
the West Tisbury Police, and her good judgment and sleuthing
abilities are frequently sought out by her friends and neighbors.
After a few pages we forget the age thing, which is as it
should be in a series as good as this one.
Death and Honesty is a witty amalgam of characters inhabiting
a plot designed for the slightly unhinged reader who loves
wit, lots of plot twists and a little heady confusion. Victoria
mixes it up with three elderly town assessors and their hand-picked
town clerk, who’ve been doing some profitable skimming
off the town’s tax bills.
She gets on the scene of a couple of murders,
and renews her acquaintance with a former friend, now playing
the part of a mysterious chauffeur. Add to this mix a spiritual
leader who runs a few side projects that stray from a strictly
religious format, and his sexy wife, Delilah, who has some
offbeat ideas of her own.
There’s also an intriguing assortment of animals, including
a peripatetic rooster, goats that faint, turtles that snap,
and a nosy Jack Russell terrier.
Riggs has a gift for dialogue, and Death and Honesty crackles
with good humor throughout. A thirteenth-generation Martha’s
Vineyarder herself, the author commands a good view of both
the Vineyard scenery and the island’s mix of characters,
including a Greek chorus of regulars who comment on the action
from the porch of Alley’s General Store.
Readers of all stripes will surely enjoy this mix of good
humor, solid characters and familiar locale. Cheers to Victoria
and friends; I’m looking forward to adventures still
to come.
A
well-written cozy A Review of Death
and Honesty
by Nash Black, author of Writing as a Small Business
and Haints
on Bird's
Eye View Book Reviews
Death and Honesty by Cynthia Riggs continues
the sleuthing skills of Victoria Trumbull for the delight
of the author's many fans. Victoria is ninety-two-years-old
and her nosiness when it comes to murder has earned her the
position of a deputy on the local police force, which is a
responsibility Victoria strives to fulfill.
Cynthia Riggs parlays a varied background and a position
as a thirteenth-generation Islander on Martha's Vineyard into
an outstanding series that gains more fans as each addition
is published.
Victoria discovers the body of a neighbor who happens to
be one of the community's tax-assessors. No one really cares
for a person who fulfills this position, but murder is taking
distaste too far.
Another name for honesty is money plant and though its bright
bluish/purple bloom is lovely in a late-spring garden; it
is invasive and roots out frailer plants.
This soon happens as Victoria discovers the
tax-assessors have been raising the assessment values on properties
owned by the seasonal residents, the extra income is not evident
in the towns coffers.
Delilah Sampson is one such owner who is facing financial
crisis of her own. The heat begins to build for Delilah when
the body of the private pilot for a disreputable minister
is found in her pond. A former helpful friend of Victoria's
is acting as Delilah's chauffeur under another name, which
leads Victoria to wonder if he, too, is no longer to be trusted.
Join Victoria in a cozy mystery that is well plotted, filled
with humor and substance that will take you to the beach.
A well-written cozy is a welcome break for the deluge of heavy
chiller-thrillers.
Quarrelling
with neighbors over an out of control rooster A Review of Death
and Honesty
by Stephen Wesley
Staff Review in The Quill
Death is what it is whether it is by natural
causes or murder, and "Honesty" or "Lunaria" is known as the
money plant. Together these two words form the title of Ms.
Riggs eighth book featuring ninety-two-year-old sleuth Victoria
Trumbull. All of her novels are named after plants or flowers
which serve as clues to the mysteries.
Set on the island of Martha's Vineyard in modern times, the
book has a Ms. Marple quality to the story. Islanders with
oddities and old fashioned ways such as making jellied candies
from island berries, raising chickens and goats, and quarrelling
with neighbors over an out of control rooster that crows morning,
noon and night.
The book opens with Victoria on an investigation involving
murder and mistaken identity. Soon we discover the island's
three town real estate assessors, Ellen, Ocyepete, and Selena
are running a tax scam on wealthy property owners by sending
overassessed bills and stockpiling the money into secret accounts.
When a fourth party becomes involved wanting
a piece of the pie?.more bodies begin appearing. Page flipping
becomes a habit as Victoria is on to the scam and making headway
into solving the murders. A sub-plot involving one of the
rich homeowners, an unholy clergyman, and a chauffeur thickens
the plot.
Ms. Riggs uses rapid fire dialogue effectively as a way to
propel the story, and it also makes the characters all the
more real. Her prose is clear and flowing.
Death and Honesty makes a great, fun beach read. My only
regret with this novel is that the character Victoria Trumbull
did not have her usual Saturday
night fare of baked beans.
The
first body that turns up... A Review of Death
and Honesty
by Carole Goldberg
Hartford Courant
Cynthia Riggs might have called this "Martha's
Vineyard Mystery," her eighth set on the island, "Death and
Taxes." That's because the first body that turns up is one
of three town assessors involved in overcharging rich property
owners to feather their own retirement nests. Next to go is
the pilot for the hypocritical clergyman husband of Delilah,
a TV star who has a Vineyard home. He runs afoul of some nasty
snapping turtles. Then a town clerk goes to that big filing
cabinet in the sky. What's Victoria Trumbull, the heroine,
to do? At 92, this poetry-writing amateur detective and island
native takes on the case, with the help of her friendly rival,
Emery Meyer, who is driving Miss Delilah around.
Riggs, herself a 13th generation Vineyarder,
runs a bed-and-breakfast there for poets and writers and has
a degree in geology. Her lush description of the island and
its creatures makes her witty mysteries even more pleasurable
to read.
A
body in the pantry, a body in the pond and a body in the attic A Review of Death
and Honesty
Richmond Times-Dispatch
There's a body in the pantry, a body in the
pond and a body in the attic. And here to investigate is Victoria
Trumbull, the intrepid 92-year-old heroine of Cynthia Riggs'
series set on Martha's Vineyard.
Death and Honesty is the eighth installment in Riggs' string
of mysteries, all named for varieties of plants. This time
out, Victoria, a poet as well as a special police deputy,
must deal with three crooked tax assessors (all septuagenarian
women), a predatory evangelist, the evangelist's wife (a former
call girl) and a rooster that won't shut up.
With her trademark tenacity, Victoria susses
out the killer as Riggs weaves the plot threads together into
a credible whole.
Victoria is the epitome of Yankee rectitude and fortitude;
with each novel, she becomes more endearing. And Riggs --
a 13th-generation islander -- writes with Yankee ingenuity
and dry humor, creates realistic characters and has a good
ear for dialogue. She's a perfect tour guide for an armchair
excursion to the Vineyard.
A
great beach read... A Review of Death
and Honesty
by Valerie A. Russo
The Patriot Ledger
A great beach read on a Vineyard vacation is
Death and Honesty, a Martha’s Vineyard murder mystery
involving a trio of crooked assessors and their accomplices
by author Cynthia Riggs of West Tisbury.
The 227-page hardcover from St. Martin’s
Press/Minotaur is the eighth book in the series featuring
Victoria Trumbull, the 92-year-old amateur sleuth who always
cracks the case.
Engaging
eighth Martha’s Vineyard mystery... A Review of Death
and Honesty
Publishers Weekly
Victoria Trumbull, indomitable 92-year-old deputy
police officer and poet, investigates smalltown skulduggery
in Riggs’s engaging eighth Martha’s Vineyard mystery
(after 2007’s Shooting Star). Along with the dead body
of widow Lucy Pease, Victoria finds property cards containing
tax information in the home of one of the three town assessors,
Ellen Meadows, who’s off island. Knowing these cards
should never have left the town hall, Ellen gets on the trail
of a skimming scheme involving the assessors and their clerk,
Oliver Ashpine.
Meanwhile, Victoria learns that Ashpine is threatening
to reveal the unsavory past of Delilah Sampson, a flamboyant
TV star who owns an island property, if Delilah doesn’t
pay her outrageously high property tax. Getting an agricultural
“restriction” by turning her property into a farm
could be the solution to Delilah’s problem. Once again,
Riggs, a 13th-generation Vineyarder, depicts the flaws and
foibles of her island characters with sympathy and humor.
Labyrinth
full of puzzles, dead ends, and humorous surprises... A Review of Death
and Honesty
by Dan Cabot
The Martha's Vineyard Times
The latest Martha's Vineyard mystery in the
popular series by West Tisbury's Cynthia Riggs [was] released
early in May. As always, the star is Victoria Trumbull, the
nonagenarian poet and sleuth based on Dionis Coffin Riggs
(1898-1997), Cynthia Riggs's talented and indomitable mother.
In a preface to "Death and Honesty," Ms. Riggs
writes, "Victoria is very much alive to me, and I gather
she is to you [her fans] too. She'll stay 92 forever, which
she claims is her best year so far."
Video footage by Sam DeckerIn response to a question from
The Times, Ms. Riggs acknowledged that Victoria has evolved
a little over the course of several novels, "But not
much. [My mother] was such a strong character. I had thought
that Dionis would get diluted and Victoria would go her own
way, but that hasn't happened."
This time the hanky-panky begins in the town hall, with three
crooked assessors, whose names Ms. Riggs says are based on
the harpies in Greek myth, and their weaseling clerk, who
is also the tax collector. Add a wealthy former porn queen
married to a nasty TV evangelist, a mysterious chauffer, and,
of course, a few murders, and you're off down a twisting up-Island
labyrinth full of puzzles, dead ends, and humorous surprises.
It should be noted that with few exceptions, the fictional
West Tisbury in Ms. Riggs's novel is only superficially the
same as the one where we live. For one thing, we have far
fewer murders. Some of the geography is the same (the police
station, the town hall, Alley's store, the names of major
roads). A few characters are recognizable. For example, Mary
Kathleen "Casey" O'Neill, the lady police chief
who sometimes calls on Victoria's powers of detection, is
pretty clearly based on Beth Toomey.
But Ms. Riggs told The Times that her characters are not
intended to be real people with fictional names. "My
books are not romans à clef," she says. It amuses
her that none of her friends and acquaintances ever seem to
see themselves in the villainous characters, but four or five
will ask, confidentially, if they are not the source of the
same positive character.
Those who know Ms. Riggs will recall that she has not been
an admirer of the real West Tisbury assessors, and was herself
once an unsuccessful candidate for the position on a platform
of reform. Although her political opinions may underlie the
germination of the story, the nefarious activities of the
fictional assessors have nothing to do with her quarrel with
the real appraisal system.
Non-gardeners may be surprised that Ms. Riggs's latest mystery
does not at first glance seem to be following her custom of
titling her books with the names of flowers ("Shooting
Star," "The Paperwhite Narcissus," "Jack
in the Pulpit," "Deadly Nightshade"). However,
the reader soon learns that honesty is a flower too. The botanical
name is Lunaria (it also goes by money plant, moonwort, satin
flower, and silver dollar). That said, fans will not be at
all surprised that the flower name in the title is given an
ironic twist in the story. Victoria is warned that honesty,
the flower, is an invasive plant, likely to spread where it's
not wanted. She plants it anyway. Honesty, the virtue, is
likely to be scarce in the fictional West Tisbury where crime
and murder blossom. Not to worry: Victoria herself is honest
to a fault.
Ms. Riggs's next novel, her ninth, will be titled "Touch-Me-Not.
Yet
another irresistible beach read... A Review of Shooting
Star
Publishers Weekly
Riggs's pleasing seventh Martha's Vineyard mystery
(after 2006's Indian Pipes) finds her 92-year-old heroine,
Victoria Trumbull, a poet and deputy police officer, becoming
a playwright for a summertime stage adaptation of Frankenstein.
The amateur theatrical troupe ? which includes such locals
as DEA agent Howland Atherton (playing the monster) and high
school student Dawn Haines (playing Frankenstein's bride)
? prepares for opening night under the dictatorial leadership
of artistic director Dearborn Hall.
The production is beset by tragedy when its
eight-year-old star, Teddy Vanderhoop, goes missing, and his
neighbor, also an actress in the show, is found murdered.
Demoralized by the death and disappearance, much of the cast
drops out, but Dearborn insists the show must go on ? with
farcical results. Riggs delivers yet another irresistible
beach read.
Everyone
is depicted in colorful broad strokes... A Review of Shooting
Star
By GraceAnne DeCandido
Booklist
This lightly plotted mystery is full of the
flora, fauna, and aroma of Martha's Vineyard. The owlish Victoria
Trumbull, poet, police deputy, and playwright at age 92, is
horrified when her version of Frankenstein, written for the
local community theater, turns from social commentary to farce—and
cast members keep dying.
Everyone is depicted in colorful broad strokes—drunken
director, amiable local police, bright-eyed teens—and
Victoria manages to feed and house most of them as well as
solve mayhem and heartbreak. A lot about the joys of community
theater is tucked in among the soup, rescued puppies, and
ugly divorces.
Will
have the audience applauding for encore performances... A Review of Shooting
Star
By Harriet Klausner
The seventh Martha's Vineyard mystery thriller
is a fun lighthearted tale that fans of the series will fully
enjoy. Besides insight into the original Frankenstein, the
whodunit is shrewdly set up from almost the onset keeping
readers wondering who and why.
SHOOTING STAR is a wonderful amateur sleuth
tale (although the feisty heroine has become certified as
a graduate of the Tisbury Citizen Police Academy) that will
have the audience applauding for encore performances.
The
narrator is ideal for this leisurely paced tale... A Review of Deadly
Nightshade on audio tape, narrated by Davina Porter
By Edward Morris
ForeWord Magazine
This unabridged reading of the author?s first
Martha?s Vineyard mystery (originally published in 2001) introduces
that most endearing and unlikely of sleuths, ninety-two-year-old
Victoria Trumbull. She?s a well-regarded poet who puts her
keen powers of observation to work after she hears a murder
being committed one evening in the harbor at Oak Bluffs, where
her granddaughter, Elizabeth, is the assistant harbormaster.
The victim turns out to be Bernie Marble, a town official
and hotel owner who may have been involved in transporting
drugs, skimming harbor receipts, and other unsavory enterprises.
More bodies will be dropping before the puzzle is finally
solved.
Because the Oak Bluffs police chief is Marble?s
business partner and generally thought to be crooked himself,
Trumbull teams up with Domingo, the harbormaster and former
New York cop, to investigate the murder. There is no shortage
of suspects. In addition to the shady police chief, there?s
a menacing townie named Meatloaf; a former MIT prof with a
sleek yacht and a $5 million Vineyard home purportedly purchased
from his software-design fortune; and the hulking Dojan Minnowfish,
a member of the island?s Wampanoag tribe who takes a liking
to Trumbull when he discovers she was a friend of his great-grandmother.
The author, a thirteenth-generation resident
of Martha?s Vineyard, based the character of Victoria on her
mother, the poet and newspaper columnist Dionis Coffin Riggs,
who died in 1997 at the age of ninety-eight. Given such grounding,
it?s only natural that the island itself becomes a major character,
one that Riggs depicts with exquisite attention to details,
sounds, and colors. She even provides an amusing Greek chorus
via the patrons of the Artcliff Diner, an actual eatery in
the town of Vineyard Haven. Their wry conversations about
local personalities and goings-on are priceless.
The narrator, with her range of voices and grasp
of natural speech patterns, is ideal for this leisurely paced
tale. Rather than mimicking the clipped New England accent,
her characters sound English, some with overtones of Welsh.
The mixture works, enabling her to move smoothly from Trumbull?s
more refined musings to Domingo?s gruff profanity without
descending into caricature.
A few incidents in the book seem contrived?such
as the final confrontation scene around Trumbull?s dinner
table?but this is still a rousing good yarn and ample evidence
of Riggs?s extraordinary gift for intrigue and description.
She has since authored five more engaging Vineyard mysteries,
including The Paperwhite Narcissus and Indian Pipes.
...
prose that makes the book sing A Review of Indian
Pipes
By Hermine Hull
The Martha's Vineyard Times
There are many levels on which to enjoy Cynthia
Riggs's latest mystery, "Indian Pipes." If you love the Vineyard
it is great fun to read about familiar places, some not so
familiar, and to try to guess who the characters might be.
There is the twisting and turning plot of a good murder mystery.
And there is prose, beautifully written, by a wonderful writer.
Cynthia Riggs is a thirteenth-generation Islander.
She lives here year-round and runs a B&B and workshops for
writers and poets in her family home, The Cleaveland House,
in West Tisbury. So her stories have the feel of the Island.
Her dirt roads lead to secret places and her characters seem
familiar. Her detective, Victoria Trumbull, is clearly a paean
to her mother, poet Dionis Coffin Riggs. Reading of Victoria's
adventures, gestures, attitudes, and common sense, I vividly
picture Mrs. Riggs as I remember her.
The basic plot involves Wampanoag tribal politics,
the issue of casino gambling, a motorcycle rally held on the
Island, and of course, a murder. That brings sibling rivalries
and an inheritance into the mix. The characters are well drawn
and colorful, their motives understandable. In the New York
Times Sunday Book Review, reviewer Marilyn Stasio wrote, "People
are so nice in West Tisbury that even the villains seem less
than evil - more like seriously naughty."
But it is the prose that makes the book sing.
Here is a description of Victoria and her granddaughter, Elizabeth,
entering a house down on one of West Tisbury's south shore
coves: "The entry was hung with coats and yellow slickers,
a denim carpenter's apron, a couple of
baseball caps. Three or four fishing rods, a
kayak paddle, and a pair of oars were propped against the
inner door, and a collection of lures, most of them old looking,
lined a shelf. Spider webs festooned the ceiling, wedded the
sleeve of one coat to another, strung the lines of the fishing
rods together. The splintery wood floor, partially covered
with a worn piece of linoleum, had a collection of hip boots,
waders, and worn leather boots, their rusty eyelets laced
with rawhide thongs, green with mold."
As the plot thickens, Victoria uses all her
wiles and courage to trap the killer. While waiting, however,
she is often found sitting quietly on a rock or against a
tree trunk, writing poetry in her ever-present notebook. The
development of her sestina, "a poem with six lines and a final
triplet, all stanzas having the same six words at the line
ends in six different sequences," according to my Oxford English
Dictionary, weaves its way throughout the book. I felt disappointed
never to be able to read the completed sestina and remain
curious about its development, but I must remember that this
is a work of fiction. Maybe there was no sestina.
As I read along, I never figured out who the
murderer was, which to me, an inveterate murder mystery reader,
is the mark of a good plot, so I was quite satisfied at the
eventual denouement. Victoria and her collection of associate
sleuths orchestrated an exciting ending. And I was grateful
for a bout of insomnia, which gave me an extra few hours of
middle-of-the-night reading time in this busy summer season.
If you don't have insomnia, I am sure a beach chair or hammock
will do just fine for a perfect summer afternoon with a good
book like this one.
...
seriously naughty A Review of Indian
Pipes
By Marilyn Stasio
The New York Times
... [The Cape Cod] region is currently awash
in fictional murder and mayhem. Cynthia Riggs's INDIAN PIPES
(Thomas Dunne/St. Martin's Minotaur, $22.95) is typical of
the cozy mysteries inspired by the picturesque charms of Martha's
Vineyard, with its quiet coves and quaint cottages. Victoria
Trumbull, the 92-year-old sleuth in this series, is the most
tolerant person in West Tisbury on issues ranging
from a neighbor's homosexuality to an Indian
tribe's proposal for a gambling casino. But when an engineer
performing soil tests on tribal land is found dead at the
bottom of a 200-foot cliff, Victoria realizes it's up to her
to save her beloved community from destroying itself. People
are so nice in West Tisbury that even the villains seem less
than evil — more like seriously naughty.
...
another winner A Review of Indian
Pipes
From Publishers Weekly
At the start of Riggs's warm and witty sixth
Martha's Vineyard mystery to feature Victoria Trumbull (after
2005's The Paperwhite Narcissus), the feisty 92-year-old deputy
sheriff stumbles on the body of a neighbor, reclusive engineer
Jube Burkhardt, who appears to have fallen to his death from
a cliff. Two days earlier, Jube attended a meeting of the
local Wampanoag tribal council about testing soil for a prospective
casino's septic system. Not surprisingly, many islanders oppose
the casino project. The
arrival of a gang of motorcyclists who like
to stunt-ride further raises the temperature. Victoria's investigation
leads her to a second body, a burning house, a missing computer
and considerable personal peril. Lovely descriptions of the
Vineyard in the fall, plenty of suspenseful action and a cast
of eccentric supporting characters, including the bikers'
tough college professor leader, help make this another winner.
She
takes chances that horrify her boss... Product description of Indian
Pipes
by St. Martin's Minotaur
Dense fog shrouds the colorful clay cliffs of
Gay Head on the westernmost end of the Island as 92-year-old
poet Victoria Trumbull becomes involved in her sixth Martha's
Vineyard Mystery.
She and her granddaughter Elizabeth are taking a break before
heading home after visiting a too talkative friend. As they
stand by the fence savoring the fresh sea air, the rays from
the lighthouse above them illuminate something that seems
to be moving far below. Victoria can only catch glimpses through
gaps in the streaming fog in the rotating red and white beams.
Victoria and her Wampanoag friend Dojan Minnowfish, who has
returned to the Island from exile in Washington, D.C., try
to prevent a series of baffling murders that seem to have
something to do with a Harley Davidson and Indian motorcycle
rally,
tribal members fighting for and against an Island gambling
casino, landowners concerned about escalating property taxes,
developers squabbling over land, and deeply buried family
secrets surfacing.
Victoria, a deputy police officer, has proved her value to
Island crime fighting. She knows almost everybody on the Island,
is related to most of them, and knows who's not speaking to
whom and why.
But her official position, validated by the hat she now wears
that reads, "West Tisbury, Police Deputy," has given
her too much confidence, and she takes chances that horrify
her boss, Chief Mary Kathleen (Casey) O'Neill. Victoria compensates
for her physical limitations by outthinking the bad guys every
time -- or almost every time.
Fans of Riggs' Martha's Vineyard mysteries already
love the series' ninety-something protagonist, Victoria Trumbull.
This fifth adventure will only strengthen that bond. The delightful
Victoria is at her best here, confronting Colley Jameson,
the obnoxious editor of the Island Enquirer, who has threatened
to replace her West Tisbury news column with a younger person's
outlook. Then, when Colley begins receiving odd obituaries
about himself that coincide with murders occurring in the
area, he reluctantly hires Victoria to investigate. As Victoria
tries to figure out who is responsible for three
murders and the threats against Colley, numerous
suspects appear, including bitter ex-wives and one greedy
ex-husband. In addition to the usual colorful supporting cast
of West Tisbury eccentrics, Riggs introduces an utterly charming
new character, the grumbly William Botts. Founder and editor
of the one-page Island Grackle, Botts leads a simple life--until
Victoria begins writing for him and causes his subscriber
numbers to skyrocket. As usual, Riggs paints a thoroughly
compelling picture of island life. Like Victoria, this series
gets more charming with age. - Jenny McLarin
Riggs's
delightful fifth Martha's Vineyard mystery A Review of The
Paperwhite Narcissus
From Publishers Weekly
When Colley Jameson, the harried, hard-drinking
editor of the Island Enquirer, refuses to reinstate Victoria
Trumbull's weekly column, even after the 92-year-old sheriff's
deputy saves his life when his tie gets stuck in a printing
press, Victoria offers her services elsewhere in Riggs's delightful
fifth Martha's Vineyard mystery (after 2004's Jack in the
Pulpit ). William Botts, editor of the West Tisbury Grackle
, a one-page news sheet that sells for a dime, is happy to
take on Victoria as an unpaid reporter, especially after she
scoops the Enquirer with a story about two
halves of a body found at widely separated locations.
The deceased turns out to be an unloved developer, and the
plot soon thickens with a fatal poisoning, threatening letters,
disgruntled ex-wives and a third murder. By this point in
the series, Riggs has achieved an easy style and comfortable
pace that perfectly suit her heroine. Vineyard watchers may
miss the focus on environmental concerns of earlier books,
but they'll be relieved to find that the Enquirer and Grackle
bear no resemblance to the two actual Martha's Vineyard newspapers.
Steeped
in rich characters and a sense of place Product description of The
Paperwhite Narcissus
by St. Martin's Minotaur
In this fifth book in the Victoria Trumbull
series, the ninety-two-year-old sleuth finds herself embroiled
in a series of murders after she is fired from her job as
West Tisbury correspondent for The Island Enquirer (the editor
claims the newspaper needs a younger look).
Victoria, determined to show that age is no barrier to newspapering,
immediately throws her weight behind The Grackle, intent on
turning the two-page West Tisbury newsletter into a formidable
competitor of the Enquirer. And it looks as though she will.
In the meantime, the Enquirer's narcissistic editor has been
receiving a series of obituaries, each naming him as the deceased.
He would dismiss them as a sick joke, but the obituaries follow
the actual deaths of people close to him. Rather than going
to the police, he grudgingly rehires Victoria to
uncover the identity of the obituary writer. Victoria knows
almost everybody on the Island, and she may be the only person
who can solve the mystery before the editor needs a genuine
obituary of his own.
In The Paperwhite Narcissus, as in the four previous books
in the series, Cynthia Riggs explores the rich and varied
setting of Martha's Vineyard in a way that only a native Islander
can. The story glides from Wasque, the desolate southeast
corner of Chappaquiddick, to the Coast Guard boat ramp in
Menemsha; from the elegantly maintained Captains' houses in
Edgartown to the wild Atlantic Ocean beach at Quansoo.
A delightfully cozy read, steeped in rich characters and
a sense of place, this latest Victoria Trumbull mystery is
sure to charm long-time fans and first-time readers.
Cynthia Riggs delivers one of the those rare novels that
manages to combine a great story with a descriptive writing
style. Too many narratives that provide vivid imagery to the
surrounding environment, in which their story takes place,
lose the emphasis on plot development.
The main character (Victoria Trumbull) in this fine work
is a ninety-two-year-old resident of West Tisbury (Martha's
Vineyard Mystery Series) with a sharp mind and a lot of attitude.
I found myself enjoying Victoria's character development throughout
the entire novel. She reminded me of so many people I have
met over the years. Her stubbornness and bluntness make her
a character who you enjoy learning more about. I think we
all have a little of Victoria Trumbull in all of us.
There are three things I look for in a novel; this one has
all three:
1. A great entry. Jack in the Pulpit does that on page one.
Bravo to Cynthia Riggs! A first few paragraphs that grab you
into the story, and she didn't have to rely on profanity,
sex, or a disgusting murder scene on that first page to do
so. If your not sure what I am talking about - go to the best-seller
fiction rack and look at the first pages of most of the novels.
They usually have the "F" word, a murder, or a graphic
sexual comment on the first page; not all of them, but a LOT
of them.
2. Characters who you would love to meet in person - if they
were actually real. Riggs manages to do that with a lot of
the characters in this novel. There are a few characters that
needed a bit more development (e.g. Victoria's artistic renters),
but for the most part, this novel does a great job of character
development.
3. Keeping the story moving along while it grabs the reader
into the surrounding environment. I have a hard time reading
anything by Charles Dickens because his writing becomes so
descriptive that the story-line disappears inside a honeycomb
of surroundings. By the time some authors finish describing
a room, you forget why the protagonist entered the room in
the first place. I believe Cynthia Riggs has found the perfect
balance in her writing. I can picture the surroundings without
forgetting why it is important to the story.
I don't want to give away the plot of this fictional work
by going into too much detail, but it is a murder-mystery
that has more than one story going on at a time. Victoria's
granddaughter, Elizabeth, comes to stay with her after her
marriage heads south. People in West Tisbury begin to die
(no I'm not telling you more about that) and Police Chief
Casey Casey O'Neill is forced to except Victoria's theory
that someone is actually murdering certain citizens of the
normally quite town.
Riggs vivid, verbal paintings of the beautiful surroundings
in the backdrop of this story are second to none. Got to give
this author her PROPS, she can be brilliant.
If you love to read, and you love to read a good detective/murder-mystery,
then this book is for you. You'll find Jack in the Pulpit
to be a pleasure to read.
Fall
is a splendid season on Martha's Vineyard A Review of Jack
in the Pulpit
From Publishers Weekly
Fall is a splendid season on Martha's Vineyard,
with spectacular views of land and sea in the ever-changing
light. The sudden death of four people in one month, all parishioners
at the same church, however, upsets the island's tranquility.
In Riggs's absorbing fourth Vineyard mystery (after 2003's
Cemetery Yew), Victoria Trumbull, the wise and sprightly nonagenarian
island native, is caught in the middle of a jealous battle
between the new minister and the retiring minister (both named
Jack) at the community church. The ministers' wives are spreading
gossip about the four deceased, all of
whom provided handsomely for the church. If
Victoria's granddaughter, a fugitive from a vengeful and abusive
husband, adds to her worries, Victoria can take solace in
her developing friendship with the new, city-bred police chief.
A complex, well-paced plot, involving a never-mentioned grandparent,
an auto accident, a dead seagull and a basket of mushrooms,
comes to a neat resolution. A sensitive observer of the scene,
Riggs writes with warmth and humor about all-too-human characters
with whom readers can readily identify.
West
Tisbury's residents are dropping like flies A Review of Jack
in the Pulpit
by Jenny McLarin in Booklist
In this fourth installment in her Victoria Trumbull
series, Riggs offers a kind of prequel that explains why Victoria's
granddaughter, Elizabeth, first came to live with her 92-year-old
grandmother, and how Victoria became a deputy for the West
Tisbury police. While the town's old and new ministers—both
named Jack—try to forge a positive relationship, West
Tisbury's residents are dropping like flies. Four people die
within a short time, and all appear to have eaten gifts of
food. New police chief Casey O'Neill relies on Victoria, who
knows the town and everyone
in it, to help her figure out what's going on.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth is stalked by her psychotic ex-husband,
and Victoria is feuding with the "Meals on Wheels"
driver with whom she had a fender-bender. Readers who appreciate
Riggs' incorporation of the flora and fauna of Martha's Vineyard
into her stories will be pleased that this tale also features
evocative descriptions of island plants and birds. This pleasant
trip back in time will give Victoria's fans a better appreciation
of the notable nonagenarian.
At
92, Victoria Trumbull's Energy
Remains the Secret to Her Success A Review of Jack
in the Pulpit by Helen Phillips
From The Vineyard Gazette
Ninety-two-year-old Victoria Trumbull reads
to the "elderly" at the hospital; unapologetically
crashes into the Meals on Wheels van; defends her granddaughter,
Elizabeth, from an abusive husband; drinks beer at 10 a.m.;
oversees the blossoming of a romance between her two male
boarders; calmly dissects a seagull corpse; doesn't "envy
anybody anything"; becomes an official police deputy,
and figures out what mushroom quiche has to do with the September
deaths of four members of a tightly knit Vineyard community.
Victoria's boundless energy makes Jack in the
Pulpit, Cynthia Riggs's fourth Martha's Vineyard mystery,
a page-turner. Because it's impossible to predict where the
young-at-heart heroine is headed next, there is an irresistable
temptation to follow close on her heels and find out.
It is difficult to tell whether Victoria is
the sidekick to the new female police chief, Casey O'Neill,
or vice versa. Either way, the caring-yet-feisty rapport between
the two women is at the heart of the novel.
Ms. Riggs, a thirteenth-generation Islander,
imbues Jack in the Pulpit with her vast knowledge of all life
forms on the Vineyard, from the plants and flowers to the
lively local characters. For off-Islanders, this book is an
excellent way to get acquainted with the small-town lifestyle
and natural environment of the Island. The author's detailed
descriptions of the Vineyard's September flora may even sway
a few summer residents to stay an extra month. For Islanders,
the book will strike very close to home.
As Victoria and Chief O'Neill puzzle through
the mystery, they face the charms and frustrations of living
in a community where everyone is either a blood relative,
a neighbor or both. Ms. Riggs manages to critique small-town
living while simultaneously expressing a deep tenderness for
it.
The mysterious deaths themselves hinge on the
generosity of the Islanders. The novel grapples with the question
of how a town steeped in tradition can cope with the arrival
of newcomers, such as wash-ashore Chief O'Neill and the new
Reverend Jack, both of whom have important community positions.
It also addresses the need to reconcile a simple,
old-fashioned way of life with modern complexities. When is
it time to put locks on the doors? When does Elizabeth's ex-husband,
Lockwood, become a dangerous stalker rather than an accepted,
albeit lovelorn, member of the community? When should home-cooked
dishes left by friendly neighbors be tested for poison?
But Ms. Riggs's novel is more than an in-depth
exploration of the darker side of Vineyard life. The crowning
achievement of the book is her ability to create compassion
for all the characters, including the villains. Her characters
are rich and complex, an effect created by the many points
of view she presents. The reader spends time looking at the
situation from the perspective of such questionable figures
as Lockwood and Reverend Jack.
We are inside the self-righteous Lockwood's
head as he anxiously prowls around Victoria's house, searching
for Elizabeth, whom he refers to as "the bitch."
We are with Reverend Jack when he carefully
hides his copy of Hustler underneath a stack of Bible lessons.
Later, we watch Lockwood muse over the nice things he'll do
for Elizabeth when she comes back to him, such as baking her
a quiche.
We watch Reverend Jack deliver food to Lockwood,
on whom he's taken pity.
Ms. Riggs rescues her characters from occasional
tendencies toward one-dimensionality by showing them in both
generous and corrupt moments.
The last 15 pages of Jack in the Pulpit are
packed with small revelations and a shocking climax. The mystery
is satisfying in itself, but the most striking element of
the conclusion is the compassion with which our heroine treats
the murderer.
Ms. Riggs's writing style, like Victoria herself,
is straightforward and clever. The tone is always tongue-in-cheek.
The author mocks the mystery genre while delighting in it.
At the end, Victoria proudly claims, "I
did a denouement, like Nero Wolfe." There's a lot to
like about Jack in the Pulpit, from the Vineyard mood to the
vivid cast of characters to the intricate plot, but Victoria
Trumbull's sassiness is what makes the book great. By the
end of the novel, one may be tempted—like Elizabeth,
like Victoria's two boarders—to move in under Victoria's
roof and be right there to see what scheme she'll cook up
next.
- The Vineyard Gazette, June 25, 2004
...stopping
neither to feed the cat nor turn on the evening alarms A Review of The
Cemetery Yew
by Thelma J. Straw in Mystery Reviews
The fact that the author has thirteen generations
of Islanders behind her convinces you beyond any shadow of
doubt that she knows her material from the get-go. Martha's
Vineyard, that splendid triangular Atlantic island located
south of Cape Cod, between the Elizabeth Islands and Nantucket,
is a major character in The Cemetery Yew, as is the weather.
New to this widely-acclaimed series by Cynthia Riggs, I turned
to Chapter 1 with eager anticipation. Needless to say, enchanted
by the nonagenarian protagonist, Victoria Trumbull, I stayed
with the book until THE END, stopping neither to feed the
cat nor turn on the evening alarms!
Victoria is planting tulip bulbs on her husband's grave when
she hears noises nearby. Walking with her stick, she wends
her way among the gravestones and finds the daughter of the
cemetery superintendent and a workman at an empty grave under
a yew tree. Ordered to dig up a ten-year-old coffin and send
it to Milwaukee, they've found only an empty grave. An off-island
hearse is due the next day to pick up the coffin. But a major
storm ties up the East Coast transportation and the hearse
driver disappears off the ferry. Victoria may be 92, but she
lets no grass grow under her feet. Not only does she cook
supper for her divorced granddaughter, who has moved in with
her, but she writes a weekly column for the local paper and
sometimes rents rooms to paying guests.
Her neighbor's pushy cousin moves in, a noisy toucan in tow.
The woman pretends she's undergoing chemotherapy, taking Taxol,
a derivative of the poisonous yew. The illness is fake, but
Victoria does not know this at the time and graciously serves
the woman tea and gingersnaps.
Because Victoria knows all about the convoluted relationships
of the townspeople, the new off-Islander police chief has
appointed the elderly
woman her deputy, and when the case of the missing
corpse and coffin heats up in the local town Victoria is right
in the center of the search. She locates the coffin, but it
disappears again and several people who gather around the
coffin search are found brutally murdered.
As I noted earlier, the Island and its weather are major players
in this story. Riggs' descriptions are poetic and beautifully
written. 'A heavy ground fog had settled over the meadow,
like grayish-white soup. From the cookroom window, Victoria
watched the fog lap against the entry's stone steps. The pasture
cedars floated out of the mist.'
The plot thickens. The DEA, the CIA, the Foreign Service,
ties with Colombia, a contract killer, West Virginia sand,
uncut gemstones worth ten million dollars, poisonous yerba
mate, a hit list, false IDs, anagrams—all are pieces
of the puzzle of the missing coffin.
Here and there the story is colored with charming humor. The
cat 'headed for the door and waited for some house servant
to let him out.'
Either by design or by happenstance, the author penned the
last line of the book in such a way we already imagine a follow-up
to this volume. 'I wonder if we'll ever meet again.' Yes,
Cynthia Riggs, this is a marvelous segue. We liked that man!
In her mystery series of Martha's Vineyard Riggs more than
holds her own in the growing circle of major writers who use
this island as their setting—Philip Craig's books, including
his story written with William Tapply, First Light, and the
novels of Linda Fairstein, where she sets part of the story
on the Island.
We concur with critics from Publishers Weekly and the ALA
Booklist—here's to a long line of Victoria Trumbull books.
As
satisfying as a steaming bowl of chowder on a cold New England
evening A Review of The
Cemetery Yew
by Jenny McLarin in Booklist
Can a 92-year-old protagonist engage readers
of all ages? Definitely, as proven in this third adventure
featuring nonagenarian Victoria Trumbull. As the snow begins
to fly in the quaint village of West Tisbury on Martha's Vineyard,
Victoria welcomes a visitor to her cozy home. Dahlia Atherton,
on the island to visit her cousin Howland, moves in with Victoria
when Howland's house proves too dusty and drafty. Dahlia's
arrival coincides with the exhumation of a coffin supposedly
containing the remains of a suicide victim. After the coffin
is found to contain only sandbags, many people connected to
it either
disappear or are murdered. When Victoria's houseguest
appears to have something to hide, the spunky sleuth puts
her detective powers to work to uncover the whole story. Once
again, Riggs introduces entertaining supporting characters,
including town selectmen Denny Rhodes and Lucretia "Noodles"
Woods. Her native's knowledge of Martha's Vineyard shines
in the expert evocation of the picturesque community. As satisfying
as a steaming bowl of chowder on a cold New England evening.
Victoria
Trumbull takes on her most bizarre case yet A Review of The
Cemetery Yew
From Publishers Weekly
Victoria Trumbull, the astute, 92-year-old Vineyard
native and deputy police officer, takes on her most bizarre
case yet, in Riggs's third appealing Vineyard mystery (after
2002's The Cranefly Orchid Murders). An empty grave, a misplaced
coffin and a missing hearse driver are the harbingers of a
series of grotesque murders, whose victims turn out to share
an odd South American connection involving smuggling and an
exotic bird. The author lends ballast to an outlandish plot
by lovingly depicting
ordinary island people (awkward teens, a friendly
police chief, small-town officials with their rivalries and
gossips) and events (notably the return of the local high
school football team from the big game against Nantucket).
The unfamiliar portrait of the Vineyard in winter is another
plus. With patience and charm, the down-to-earth Victoria
succeeds in drawing out confidences. In the end, even she
is surprised.
Victoria
knows just about everything about everyone in town Product description of The
Cemetery Yew
by St. Martin's Minotaur
There's more than one reason the new West Tisbury
police chief officially made 92-year old Victoria Trumbull
her deputy. For one thing, Victoria knows just about everything
about everyone in town, and a lot about the rest of the Martha's
Vineyard year-round population as well. Not to mention their
ancestors. Victoria may be afflicted with the usual aches
and pains that descend on nonagenarians (she has a cutoff
shoe to accommodate her bunion, and a stout stick to help
her on her walks across the fields and in the woods). But
she is as sharp and as sharpeyed as the proverbial tack. So
it's not odd that when Victoria is the only one who notices
something amiss among the gravestones of the West Tisbury
cemetery, the chief listens.
Something is indeed amiss. Responding to a request by presumed
relatives in the Midwest to disinter a coffin for reburying
elsewhere, things go wrong from the start. The driver of the
hearse coming to collect the coffin disappears during the
Island ferry
trip in a rainstorm. Other deaths - some of
them irrefutably murder, the others suspicious - follow. And
when as a last measure the coffin is found, dug up and opened,
it does not contain the expected body. Insult upon injury,
the coffin itself disappears.
Meanwhile, the available for rent bedroom in Victoria's house
has been taken over by a woman relative of one of their neighbors
and her raucous toucan, a bird as spoiled as the most bratty
millionaire's heir. Victoria is graceful about her unwanted
boarders; but they do interfere with the column she writes
for the local newspaper and with her efforts to discover whether
the strange antics of the coffin are related to the murders.
Victoria is the most realistic and the most delightful nonagenarian
in mystery fiction. Her years have not blunted her intelligence
and her sharp wit. We're lucky that she's still around and
seems to be set for a long time.
Victoria Trumbull, a 92-year-old Martha's Vineyard
native, deputy police officer and naturalist, continues to
delight in this second outing (after 2001's Deadly Nightshade)
from Vineyard native Riggs. Lonely recluse Phoebe Eldredge
decides to sell 200 acres of beautiful, unspoiled land to
a developer rather than leave it to her descendents, in particular
her crass, rude granddaughter, whose arrival on the island
triggers the well-paced action. Because Massachusetts has
a law against destroying endangered plants, Victoria, an avid
walker, goes in search of a rare plant, any rare plant, on
Phoebe's property in order to forestall development, but first
she stumbles on a decayed corpse, which proves tobe that of
sleazy lawyer Montgomery Mausz. Victoria's new sidekick, an
11-year-old boy named
Robin, makes a worthy companion, leading her
to unexpected island nooks. A stranger pinned under a storm-toppled
tree in Victoria's driveway, an avaricious developer married
to a Nevada showgirl, a recovering Vietnam veteran, earnest
botanists, naive town officials, a clique of golfing doctors
all are involved, but not all are what they seem. Amid dealings
and double-dealings, the body count rises. The author's prodigious
fund of natural lore, both plant and animal, complements her
authentic portrait of the Vineyard's human community, complete
with a chorus of locals on the porch of a West Tisbury landmark,
Alley's general store. Bits of sly humor and wordplay add
to the fun. This mystery unfolds as nicely as the Vineyard
spring it so lovingly depicts.
Plucky
92-year-old Victoria Trumbull is back on the case A Review of The
Cranefly Orchid Murders
by Jenny McLarin in Booklist
Plucky 92-year-old Victoria Trumbull is back
on the case in this satisfying follow-up to Riggs' series
premiere, Deadly Nightshade. This time she is trailing both
a killer and a rare orchid. Victoria is enjoying spring on
Martha's Vineyard until she stumbles upon the decomposing
body of attorney Montgomery "Mickey" Mausz. It soon
becomes apparent that the murder has something to do with
a bitter struggle over the valuable property of elderly Phoebe
Eldredge. When Phoebe is tricked into selling the land to
a greedy developer, leaders
of the conservation group enlist Victoria to
find rare plants—namely, a Cranefly orchid—on the
property that might block the developer's plans for a housing
development. The suspense builds as a man is caught spying
on Victoria's house, and she and her 11-year-old assistant
are befriended by a mysterious character living in the woods.
Readers who enjoyed the charming series debut will be delighted
to get another dose of Victoria's sharp tongue.
