Stolen Honey

by Nancy Means Wright

Overview

Vermont dairy farmer Ruth Willmarth encounters beekeepers, Abenaki Indians, a dead male student, a strangled female professor, and devastating secrets from the past in this hair-raising tale. Romantic Times calls STOLEN HONEY "intricate and fascinating," while Kirkus Reviews find the mystery "penetrating, economical, and generously plotted." Mystery by Nancy Means Wright; originally published by St. Martin's Minotaur

Product Details

BN ID:	2940043336675
Publisher:	Belgrave House
Publication date:	06/28/2010
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	610 KB

About the Author

Nancy Means Wright lives, writes, and teaches in Vermont. This is her tenth book and her fourth mystery featuring Ruth Willmarth. Ruth is also the protagonist of a novella featured in Crimes of Passion, out in 2002 from Worldwide Mystery. Nancy can be reached at www.nancymeanswright.com.

Editorial Reviews

Vermont's bucolic image takes a beating in this grim tale of vandalism, grave-robbing and murder, Wright's fourth (after 2000's Poison Apples) to feature amateur sleuth Ruth Willmarth. The trouble begins when beekeeper Gwen Woodleaf's mixed-race daughter, Donna, asks fratboy Shep Noble to drive her home after a party. After making a drunken amorous advance, Shep turns up dead in a patch of deadly nightshade, a forbidden plant cultivated by the Woodleafs. Suspicions point to either Donna's protective father, a pure-bred Indian who enjoys dressing the part, or a ruffian farmhand with his own designs on Donna. Neighbors who want to buy the Woodleafs' "sacred land" make their threats obvious. Meanwhile, professor Camille Wimmett is uncovering some nasty history concerning another mixed-race family, the Godineaux. When Camille is murdered, Ruth, whose daughter is a close friend of Donna's, carries on Camille's genealogical work while also looking for links to the double murder case. At times it's difficult to see how these two plots intertwine, for Ruth is at first fixated on the Godineaux and their many descendants. As she digs deeper, however, Ruth realizes that bigotry and hatred among families, races and even genders have led to terrible havoc in this less-than-idyllic corner of New England. The gentle jacket art suggests a cozy, but readers should be prepared for lots of unpleasantness leavened with some sobering feminist lessons. Agent, Alison Picard. (Apr. 15) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Ruth Willmarth (Poison Apples) faces hardships making a go of her Vermont farm but still finds time for sleuthing. In her latest adventure, she helps a beekeeping neighbor when a college student is discovered dead in her woods. A subsequent murder intensifies her search for clues. A solid series. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

It's always risky for a farm girl to venture into a frat party, but half-Abenaki Donna Woodleaf gets punished beyond all reason. Shep Noble, the fast-talking baseball captain who takes her home, tries to rape her; next morning he's found dead in a patch of the medicinal belladonna her beekeeper mother grows; and everybody at Branbury College seems to think it's her fault-especially the anonymous correspondent who torments her with notes like "SQUAWS DIE" and "HANG THE WITCH." The real action, however, is elsewhere, in sociology professor Camilla Wimmet's research into the Godineaux family, branded a century ago as degenerate by eugenicist William Perkey's meddlesome wife Eleanor and forced to undergo sterilization, though not soon enough to prevent three generations of variously damaged offspring from fanning out over the Vermont countryside. Camilla's attempts to find out what's become of Annette Godineaux's descendants are opposed by everybody from the family members she manages to track down to the intruder who wipes her computer clean and chokes her to death. But Ruth Willmarth, whose daughter Emily is Camilla's student and Donna's friend, and whose dairy-farm helper Joey is Annette Godineaux's great-grandson, never drops a stitch as she improbably follows the search into a thicket more densely planted than any cloud of belladonna. Ruth's fourth (Poison Apples, 2000, etc.) is as penetrating, economical, and generously plotted as her first three, though readers less clever than Ruth may need a road map through the undergrowth of suspects and subplots.

Kirkus Reviews

"Wright doesn't put a foot wrong in this well-wrought mystery."--Boston Globe on Poison Apples

"Wright is completely at home in the Vermont world of farming and has a keen understanding of the historic cultural forces that are sometimes at odds with new settlers."--Vermont Sunday Magazine on Poison Apples

"Wright's second mystery...combines a finely wrought mystery with some superb local color...Wright melds setting and character with the skill of Stephen Dobyns in his Saratoga mysteries."--Booklist on Harvest of Bones

From the Publisher