Vengeance Is Mine:: A Chautauqua Murder Mystery
About this ebook
"An Agatha Christie for the text-message age," IndieReader calls the series.
It's the Fourth of July in 2017 when this mystery starts with a bang. Maureen Donahue, a Black Lives Matter filmmaker and speaker at the historic Chautauqua Institution, is killed at a raucous holiday concert -- amid the orchestra's roar and audience's popping paper bags, to simulate cannon fire at the end of Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture."
A stalker who followed Donahue to Chautauqua, a peaceful, leafy, cottage-filled, lakeside summer arts community, is quickly arrested.
The stalker's brother asks Mimi to help clear him. She's skeptical. She has her own wedding to plan. But, of course, the Chautauquan Daily reporter and relentless snoop, can't resist.
With help from her computer-savvy son Jake, Mimi sifts through layers of secrets -- of a shadowy piano teacher, a racist personal trainer and chatty chime-master, among others -- and realizes: she's been asking all the wrong questions.
The right ones unearth an ugly buried secret that puts Mimi close, maybe too close, to the real killer.
Fans of Agatha Christie and Louise Penny and "Only Murders in the Building" will enjoy this twist-filled mystery Kirkus Reviews calls, "An engaging mystery with a late twist and an especially satisfying ending."
About the author
DEB PINES, an award-winning New York Post headline writer and former reporter, is the author of seven Mimi Goldman murder mystery novels and one novelette which are top sellers in the Chautauqua Institution where they are set.
Her latest, A PLAGUE AMONG US (2021), was called "intricately plotted" and "unputdownable" when it was released on July 1, 2021. CROOKED PATHS (2020), was called "the series' best." Before that, THE FRUIT OF LIES (2019), won critical acclaim for being a "page-turner," a "great beach read" and "another well-crafted, spine-tingling and suspenseful murder mystery that will satisfy fans and newcomers alike." Her debut, IN THE SHADOW OF DEATH (2013), was dubbed “perfect if you enjoy an old-fashioned whodunit” (Jamestown Post-Journal). BESIDE STILL WATERS (2017) was named an “IndieReader-Approved Title” and called “an Agatha Christie for the text-message age.” (IndieReader) Her other novels, DELIVER US FROM EVIL (2015) and VENGEANCE IS MINE (2018), a series novelette, WHERE'S THE BEEF? (2014), and standalone short story, GONE FISHIN' (2016), have been called "riveting" and "full of page-turning twists and turns" as well as "dashes of romance and history" that make them great reads for "a summer getaway" or any season.
A newspaper reporter for two decades (for The New York Law Journal, Indianapolis Star and other publications), Deb now writes mysteries by day and snarky, pun-filled tabloid headlines by night including her prize-winners: THIS IS YOUR CAPTAIN FREAKING, (for when a JetBlue pilot had a midflight mental breakdown) and FLAKE NEWS (for a forecasted blizzard that never happened). Her 2019 headline, BEZOS EXPOSES PECKER, (for the battle between Amazon's Jeff Bezos and National Enquirer CEO David Pecker over, among other things Bezos' "junk mail") was an Internet favorite. And it had a cameo appearance on "Saturday Night Live."
A mother and grandmother, Deb was born in Brooklyn, New York, raised in Miami Beach, Florida, and now lives in New York City with her husband Dave. She's a former committee chair of the Mystery Writers of America, NYC chapter, a Brown University grad, a Chautauquan by marriage, SoulCycle indoor cycling nut, teacher, hiker, cook, lover of puns, show tunes, classic rock, coffee and Scrabble who is working on her ninth Mimi Goldman novel.
