Thanksgiving is not a popular holiday for murder if you go by the number of mystery books with that background. Maybe that's something to give thanks for, depending on your taste for mystery.
- Turkey Day Murder by Leslie Meier (Lucy Stone series), 2000 - Tinker's Cove has a long history of Thanksgiving festivities, from visits with TomTom Turkey to the annual Warriors high school football game and Lucy Stone's impressive pumpkin pie. But this year, someone has added murder to the menu, and Lucy intends to discover who left Metinnicut Indian activist Curt Nolan deader than the proverbial Thanksgiving turkey--with an ancient war club next to his head. The list of suspects isn't exactly a brief one. Nolan had a habit of disagreeing with just about everybody he met. He'd made a lot of waves with the Tinker's Cove board by first petitioning to have the Metinnicut tribe recognized--a move that would allow the Metinnicuts to build a casino--and then blasting the current building plans for not being true to his tribe's heritage. The very idea of a gambling hall in cozy Tinker's Cove raised bitter arguments on both sides of the issue. But could it have also inspired murder? Between fixing dinner for twelve and keeping her four kids from tearing each other limb from limb, Lucy has a pretty full plate already. So what's a little investigation? From the hallowed halls of Professor Fred Rumford's Winchester College library to the animated pumpkin patches of Andy Brown's turkey farm, from the crowded stands lining the town's not-quite-Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, to the blueprints for a project worth dying--and killing--for, Lucy delves into the underside of history and heritage, pride and prejudice to find a clever killer.
- Snipe Hunt by Sarah Shaber (Simon Shaw series), 1999 - Professor Simon Shaw wants nothing more than to spend a peaceful Thanksgiving with friends, staying in Perlie Beach, a small town on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. But even as the turkey roasts, he finds himself embroiled in a fifty-year-old mystery of strange disappearances, suspicious deaths, and treasures lost and found. The holiday disruption begins when the body of a local man is dredged from the waters of Perlie Beach. In his hand, several rare confederate coins; in his decaying ribs, the sharp blade of a knife. Soon Simon, aided by Julie McGloughan, a mesmerizing police attorney, discovers that secrets in this small town run as deep as the waterways that surround it. Simon knows that finding another cache of coins is about as likely as getting the guarded residents of Perlie Beach to talk. But he also knows that if he doesn't continue to investigate, a decades-old murder will remain unsolved-and another may be close at hand.
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