Monday, July 20, 2009

The Mystery of Hunting's End

The Mystery of Huntings End
by Mignon Eberhart

For those of us who anticipate a snowy evening, a comfortable chair and a good whodunit, there is always a Nurse Sarah Keate mystery by Mignon G. Eberhart. The setting is a remote and rustic hunting lodge in the Nebraska Sandhills. The hunting lodge is filled with guests, the same guests who were there five years earlier, when rich businessman and lodge owner, Hubert Kingery, died mysteriously of heart failure. His daughter, Matil, has gathered these guests back to the lodge in hopes of finding who killed her father five years ago. There are two additional guests, Lance O'Leary, a detective posing as an acquaintance of Matil Kingery, and Sarah Keate, a nurse hired to care for Matil's elderly Aunt Lucy and help detective O'Leary find Hubert Kingery's killer. Nurse Keate says of her evening journey to the lodge called Hunting's End, "the sandhills country is not unlike the ocean in its loneliness, it's immeasurable horizons...sandhills rolling so boundlessly and silently that they gave an impression of incalculable power and strength...The snow began to fly half and hour or so before we reached our destination." The month is November, the forecast is snowy. And so the stage is set! A remote lodge in an isolated landscape. A blizzard so fierce that no one is able to leave the lodge but no one from the outside is able to get in, either. The classic "locked room" mystery! And then it happens! One of the guests is murdered, the man's body is left in his guest room because the authorities cannot be summoned. Then the body disappears, the cook begins to drink heavily, the murder victim's toupee is found on the seat of a living room chair, the host's diary is stolen, there is another murder but this body remains at the lodge!!! As more than one character states, "This is the Sandhills, anything can happen!" -- recommended by Evelyn D. - Bennett Martin Public Library

[ Mignon Eberhart booklist on BookGuide ] | [ Mignon Eberhart entry on Wikipedia ] | [ semi-official Mignon G. Eberhart web site ]


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