The Mystery Megapack

her hardcover debut “wry social commentary.” The New York Times ’ Marilyn Stasio praised “Viets’s snappy critique of South Florida” in her review of Half-Price Homicide , Elaine’s ninth Dead-End Job mystery.
    Pumped for Murder , Elaine’s tenth Dead-End Job book, will be published this May.
    Elaine’s second series features St. Louis mystery shopper Josie Marcus in her sixth adventure, An Uplifting Murder . The debut, Dying in Style , tied with Stephen King on the Independent Mystery Booksellers bestseller list. Elaine won the Agatha, Anthony and Lefty Awards.

THE MAD DETECTIVE, by John D. Swain
    CHAPTER I
    THE VACATION
    At the top of a little hill, Jed Hooper shut off the engine and brought his crazy flivver to a full stop. He turned in his seat and spoke to the two passengers, buried under a heap of luggage and parcels.
    “Yonder’s the camp,” he said. “The white one, against the clump of cedars.”
    Frank Weston and his wife gazed with tired eyes over a country well worth coming hundreds of miles to behold. Though fairly well settled, as the Maine countryside goes, it seems almost a primeval wilderness, with most of the farmhouses hidden by the green forest, and only here and there in a clearing, a glimpse of distant homes, with an occasional white spire piercing the treetops. A mile away Frenchman’s Bay glowed blue and gold in the afternoon sun, and in the offing Mt. Desert loomed like a huge purple jewel floating lightly on the breast of the Atlantic.
    “Why, there’s smoke coming from our chimney!”
    Jed Hooper looked through his windshield. “Yes, ma’am. My wife reckoned it’d seem homelike to you. She’ll have a pot of tea waiting for you, and mebbe some of her molasses cookies. Thoughtful about such things, Lizzie is.”
    He slipped in the clutch, and the car started, coasting easily down the slope, crossing a noisy little brook, swinging in from the highway over a grass-grown road which brought them through a ragged orchard to the front door of a well-preserved, story-and-a-half frame house badly in need of paint. Half of an old grindstone formed the doorstep, and as the passengers dismounted stiffly, the door opened and a fat, smiling woman wearing a gingham apron beamed on them, and began to help them unload their bundles before the slower-moving Jed had heaved himself out of the car.
    “Land sakes! That a cat you got there in that satchel with a little window in it?”
    Annie Weston laughed. “Yes, Mrs. Hooper. We thought it wouldn’t be homelike without a cat; so we bought one from the animal shop in New York.”
    Lizzie Hooper lifted the satchel and peered curiously at the alarmed creature which was faintly meowing within.
    “Well,” she decided. “It ain’t much to look at! Got no tail, for one thing. Never could abide a tailless cat. They look sort of unfinished. If it was your own, one you’d got attached to, I could understand; but why on earth you should go buy one! Up here, we’re glad to give ’em away. Why, Jed has got to drown four kittens, right now. Pretty little things they be, too.”
    “Oh, how dreadful!” Annie Weston cried. “I never could bear to do it!”
    “Well, if you had about twelve a year, you’d have to, or the country’d be overrun with wild critters. We got four, right now; and whenever the count runs higher ’n that, there’s a drowning has to be tended to.”
    The city couple entered through the wide doorway, and from its little entry passed into a pleasant, low-ceilinged room in whose far end burned a cheery, open fire. The furniture was simple but effective; little, old, low rockers, with gay chintz covers; a mellow cherry table; a horsehair sofa; a great hooked rug on the floor of wide boards, some samplers and dingy steel engravings on the walls. The table was set out with dishes, cups and saucers; and soon the Westons were devouring fresh molasses cookies, dishes of wild strawberries with cream, cups of strong tea, slices of home-baked bread thickly spread with fresh butter.
    After eating, the question of the cat came up. The door was shut, and the animal released, its attention called to a saucer of rich milk. It ignored it and all the inmates with equal impatience and began to circle the room, the fur along its spine raised, whiskers twitching, eager only to find a way out of the room and house.
    “That’s the way with cats in a strange place,” Jed remarked. “They won’t settle down till they’ve learned