Trade Paperback Mystery
ISBN 0-9661879-7-0, 275 pages
Retail...$14
St Kitts price...50% discount! 
$7 (paperback) or $4 (electronic format)

Amelia Prentice, a forty-something high school English teacher comfortable in her predictable routine, suddenly awakens in the middle of a tragedy. She has tripped over the corpse of a former student in the safest of places, the Public Library. Now nothing of her cozy small town life in New York’s Adirondack region will ever be the same.

Amelia, whose pet peeve is the use of the non-word "irregardless," determinedly returns to the classroom wearing the badge of her grisly encounter – a huge bandage on her forehead – and tries to pretend nothing has happened. Soon, though, she is forced to deal with the facts: the victim’s death wasn’t simply a tragic accident and she is now a murder suspect.

Threatening situations abound. Best friend Lily Burns is tossed overboard from the Lake Champlain ferryboat, Amelia’s house is subtly but systematically vandalized and she encounters the lone woman’s nightmare, a carjacking in a deserted parking deck. The enigmatic initials UDJ are the key to what’s happening, but no one seems to know what they mean.

Despite all this menace, Irregardless of Murder is a humorous romp, full of endearing, quirky characters and witty dialogue. There’s Vern, the matchmaking cabby who’s determined to make Amelia his aunt; Alec Alexander, the shaggy professor and "fugitive from Brigadoon" who searches Lake Champlain for evidence of a Loch Ness-type monster; Steve Trechere, the suave "Millionaire from Montreal" who reminds Amelia of an abbreviated Louis Jourdan ("I found myself wanting to tell him he was wonderful in Fanny."), school nurse Judith Dee, a blue-haired gossip specializing in the medical ailments of her friends and the most fun of all, Amelia’s closest friend, Lily, a sassy, well-groomed harridan who wickedly tantalizes Professor Alec with phony monster sightings.

Throughout, Amelia surprises us – and herself – with her compassion, her wit, even her long-suppressed sensuality. ("I kissed him. It was a good kiss and I was rather proud of it, considering the limited opportunity I'd had to practice.") The story culminates in a life-and-death encounter with supernatural overtones in the middle of deep, dark Lake Champlain. It’s Amelia’s faith, courage and understanding of human nature that brings this enjoyable mystery to its highly satisfactory conclusion.

Read the prologue and first chapter