Playing the Devil

by R.J. Lee

Overview

Reporter and bridge player Wendy Winchester once again plays ace detective when a country club member is murdered in a hot tub . . .
 
Now an investigative reporter for the Rosalie Citizen in the Mississippi River port of Rosalie, Wendy still likes to unwind over a game of cards. Following the demise of the Rosalie Bridge Club, she's started her own group at the Rosalie Country Club. During the first meeting of the Country Club Bridge Players, the dummy has barely been laid down when another dummy gets in a scuffle at the bar across the room. Bridge player Carly Ogle's husband Brent is at it again.
 
After the club's new female golf pro breaks up the fight, Brent storms off to soak in a hot tub. But Carey soon finds the bullying Brent dead in the water, clubbed over the head with the pestle the barkeep uses to crush leaves for mint juleps.
 
Racist, sexist, homophobic, and an all-around lout, Brent made enough enemies to fill a bridge tournament. So Wendy has to play her cards right to get the story—and stay out of hot water long enough to put the squeeze on the killer . . .
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781496719171
Publisher:	Kensington
Publication date:	01/28/2020
Series:	A Bridge to Death Mystery , #2
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	916,759
File size:	619 KB

About the Author

R. J. Lee follows in the mystery-writing footsteps of his father, R. Keene Lee, who wrote fighter pilot and detective stories for Fiction House, publishers of WINGS Magazine and other pulp fiction periodicals in the late ’40s and ’50s. Lee was born and grew up in the Mississippi River port of Natchez but also spent thirty years living in the Crescent City of New Orleans. A graduate of the University of the South (Sewanee) where he studied creative writing under Sewanee Review editor, Andrew Lytle, Lee now resides in Oxford, Mississippi.

Editorial Reviews

12/23/2019

In Lee’s entertaining sequel to 2019’s Grand Slam Murders, investigative reporter Wendy Winchester is playing bridge at the Rosalie (Miss.) Country Club when a storm causes a power outage, permitting someone to do in the town bully, Brent Ogle, in the club’s outdoor hot tub. Brent’s long-suffering wife, who discovers the body, alerts Wendy, who phones her police chief father, Captain Bax, and her beau, Ross Rierson, of the Rosalie PD. Amateur sleuth Wendy lends a hand in the ensuing investigation, which focuses on multiple suspects, each a distinctive character. Could two or more of them be colluding to rid themselves of a braggart who rarely failed to humiliate and enrage those around him? Lee does a good job rendering Southern speech patterns in the conversations between Wendy and her friend Merleece . Readers who can accept the premise that the victim would be fool enough to stay outside in a hot tub during an electrical storm are in for a treat. Agent: Christina Hogrebe, Jane Rotrosen Agency. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

2019-10-28
A Mississippi reporter investigates the murder of a victim nobody mourns.

Hooray for Wendy Winchester. She has a simpatico new boss, and she's managed to start a bridge club at the Rosalie Country Club after the previous quartet she was hoping to play with were all murdered (Grand Slam Murders, 2019, etc.) in a case she helped her father, Capt. Bax, and her boyfriend, Ross Rierson, solve. The new director, Deedah Hornesby, is trying to broaden the club's appeal, much to the disgust of obnoxious ex-jock Brent Ogle, who's already furious that she hired a female golf pro. The first meeting of the bridge group—Wendy; Deedah; her son, Hollis Hornesby; and Brent's wife, Carly—seems to be off to a good start until a storm rolls in, the lights go out, and Brent is found dead in the hot tub. Before retiring to the tub, Brent had had a nasty fight with his two golf partners, Tip Jarvis and Connor James, over an ancient football game in which Brent was the quarterback, the rival team lost, and the time on the clock may have been changed to give Brent the chance for a last-second touchdown. Now that someone's smashed in Brent's head with the bartender's pestle, the eight people in the club at the time are prime suspects. Even the bartender, Carlos Galbis, was constantly picked on by the racist, sexist, homophobic Brent, an equal opportunity hater. Mystified by a crime that took place in the dark, Bax invites Wendy to use her considerable sleuthing talents to help him while pursuing her story for the newspaper. Everyone Wendy interviews comes across as innocent, but an idea she borrows from the rules of bridge helps her pinpoint the guilty party.

A brainy heroine, quirky characters, a thorny mystery, and insights into small-town Southern life combine for a pleasing read.

Kirkus Reviews