Croaked: an Edgar Rowdey Cape Cod Mystery

by C J Verburg

Overview

"Everything I want in a mystery...a plot that keeps you turning pages, terrific dialog, humor, great local color, ...oh yes, and murders too. I enjoyed every minute of it."

Cape Cod! To Lydia Vivaldi, fleeing a meltdown in Boston, the quaint seaside village of Quansett looks like sanctuary. Then she learns that her one friend here, DeAnne, died tragically last month. How could an ex-Fix-It Chick fall off a ladder at a film shoot? Over lunch at Leo's Back End, Lydia's shocked questions are brushed off by the flirtatious filmmaker.

She jumps on Leo's offer of a summer job--and soon realizes the locals know more than they're telling. Is it true the Back End's Wampanoag dessert chef had a fling with DeAnne? Leo's head cook claims that wasn't the dead girl's only romance, or her only secret. But the police have closed the case, and DeAnne's parents don't want anyone tarnishing their daughter's memory.

Only Edgar Rowdey, reclusive artist-author of creepy little storybooks, shares Lydia's doubts about the "accident." As she gets to know her new neighbors--a hippie bookstore clerk, an ex-police photographer, a pair of Broadway-musical composers, a retired football star--Lydia gathers rumors and recollections like seashells. But while she and Edgar sort through her collection, their #1 suspect is found drowned in Leo's frog pond. Another accident, or another murder? Can this unlikely pair of sleuths find out WTF is happening before it happens again?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780983435501
Publisher:	Boom-Books
Publication date:	04/19/2011
Series:	Edgar Rowdey Cape Cod Mysteries , #1
Pages:	360
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

A storyteller ever since she could talk, CJ Verburg spent more than a decade on Cape Cod collaborating on theater projects with the late artist and writer Edward Gorey. Their friendship inspired her Edgar Rowdey Cape Cod mystery series, from Croaked to Zapped and beyond, as well as her multimedia memoir Edward Gorey On Stage and her play Spin, or Twilight of the Bohemians, winner of the 2012 Centenary Stage Women Playwrights' Series and the 2011 Ashland New Plays Festival. A former editor and freelance writer for major publishers on both coasts, CJ now lives in San Francisco. She also writes the Cory Goodwin mysteries, starring the Boston journalist daughter of NYC private detective Archie Goodwin. Look for her stories in Fault Lines: Crime Stories by Northern California Writers; Seascape: Best New England Crime Stories, 2019; and Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine #30.

Editorial Reviews

"This book was great. Fun characters, great mystery. She's a really good writer - the characters are well fleshed out, and marvelously quirky (just like real people). It was very difficult to figure out whodunit just because they were all so normally crazy. Can't wait to read more of this series."

"Cape Cod has a natural appeal for anyone who loves ocean beaches and a sense of history, and when you throw in plenty of descriptions of good food, a heroine named Vivaldi, and a puzzling death, you have the ideal ingredients for great reading. I enjoyed every twist and turn in the plot as well as the quirky characters who kept showing unexpected relationships and strange secrets that kept me guessing right up to the final revelations."

"'Croaked' has everything I want in a mystery: Wonderful kooky characters, a plot that keeps you turning pages, terrific dialog, humor, great local color, ...oh yes, and murders, too. I enjoyed every minute of it. Highly recommended!"

"Since I'm from Cape Cod, I found it very engaging. I read it in three days because I couldn't put it down!"

"This book is a real page-turner with many moving pieces, wonderfully fey characters, and delightful surprises throughout. Great Cape Cod color, terrific fun, and a must for anyone who loves to curl up with a good mystery."

From the Publisher