Monday, April 21, 2008

In the Mood for Murder -- M.T. Jefferson


A few years ago I read a mystery novel by M.T. Jefferson called THE VICTORY DANCE MURDER, a “Homefront Mystery” set in a small town in Pennsylvania during World War II. It was a good, solid traditional mystery, not really a cozy but not hardboiled, either, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. It’s taken me a while to find the other two books in this short-lived series, but now I have, and I recently read the second one, IN THE MOOD FOR MURDER.

As in the first book, the detective is Kate Fallon, a young woman who has gone to work as a riveter in the local defense plant. Kate’s fiancé and one of her brothers are overseas in the service, so naturally she wants to do her part for the war effort. This leads her to join the Molly Pitcher Society, a group of local women whose goal is to start a canteen for the servicemen stationed in the area. Unfortunately, things take a nasty turn when the members of the society begin receiving poison-pen letters threatening blackmail and worse. This is followed rapidly by a suspicious suicide and a couple of murders, and once again Kate finds herself helping the chief of police and the editor of the local newspaper ferret out the killer.

It’s easy in a book like this for an author to go overboard on the setting, loading it down with too many details about the time period. Jefferson strikes just the right balance, avoiding anachronisms and making it seem like 1942 without beating the reader over the head with it. Likewise, the large cast of small-town characters, while a little stereotypical, comes alive in Jefferson’s hands so that the reader cares about what happens to them. That’s not too surprising when you realize that “M.T. Jefferson” is really H. Paul Jeffers, veteran author of numerous mystery novels, Westerns, true crime books, and assorted biographies and non-fiction. These Homefront Mysteries are probably the best things I’ve read by Jeffers, and I don’t hesitate to recommend them.

One word of warning, though: if you’re going to read them, you’d better tackle them in order, because the prologue of this one completely gives away the plot of the first book in the series, including the killer’s identity. That’s something I think should be avoided if at all possible.

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