Good Friday Murder (Christine Bennett Mysteries) [マスマーケット]

Christine Bennett has left the cloistered world of nuns for the profane world of New York State, where murder and madness are often linked. At a town meeting, Christine volunteers to investigate a forty-year-old murder case long since closed. Now she'll move heaven and earth to exonerate a pair of retarded savant twins, now senior citizens, of their mother's murder on Good Friday in 1950.

Christine Bennett has left the cloistered world of nuns for the profane world of New York State, where murder and madness are often linked. At a town meeting, Christine volunteers to investigate a forty-year-old murder case long since closed. Now she'll move heaven and earth to exonerate a pair of retarded savant twins, now senior citizens, of their mother's murder on Good Friday in 1950.

I always look forward to a new mystery by Lee Harris. Her novels about ex-nun Christine Bennett are in that central range between cozy and hardboiled -- the perfect balance. Ever since I encountered Christine Bennett in THE GOOD FRIDAY MURDER, which was nominated for an Edgar Award as best first novel, I've been fascinated by the author's depiction and development of her heroine -- Christine matures in surprising (but always believeable ways) as the series continues. It would be hard to pick my favorite Lee Harris mystery, but certainly among my favorites is THE CHRISTENING DAY MURDER, in which a thirty-year-old unsolved murder has impact on present-day menace.

--Joe Blades, Associate Publisher

Who Done It On That Bad Friday?

"Do you think, if James knows who did the killing, he has the mental competence to keep it a secret?"

"That's the most puzzling aspect of the whole case, Miss Bennett. Keeping a secret requires rather sophisticated thinking. I don't think he has it.... Still, forty years have passed and he's said nothing."

"Maybe he was locked in a bedroom while it happened."

"Possibly. But he would know who locked him up, wouldn't he?"

The mother of "idiot savant" twins was brutally murdered with her own kitchen knife on Good Friday, 1950. Alone with the body until its discovery on Easter Sunday, the retarded but gifted twins left their bloody fingerprints all over the Brooklyn apartment. If they didn't kill their mother forty years ago, who did?

Nominated for an "EDGAR," Lee Harris's The Good Friday Murder introduces a series of "holiday Whodunits." Just out of the convent, new suburban NY homeowner / college poetry teacher Christine Bennett finds out "Who." The Criminal Record rates the entire series as "excellent."

"Christine Bennett" Fawcett Mysteries By Lee Harris:
The Good Friday Murder*
The Yom Kippur Murder
The Christening Day Murder
The St. Patrick's Day Murder
The Christmas Night Murder
The Thanksgiving Day Murder
The Passover Murder
The Valentine's Day Murder
The New Year's Eve Murder
The Labor Day Murder
*Audio book publisher: Scheherazade AudioVisions, Inc.

Lee Harris is a pseudonym. The author has written several novels under her own name.