The book business is in a slump in Farberville, and Claire
Malloy, owner of The Book Depot, is feeling the pinch of
financial woes and the pull of summer doldrums. The plucky
amateur sleuth thinks her life is for the birds until a
mysterious new predicament sends her to a posh lakefront
community near a bird sanctuary. The problem: Her friend
Luanne is having an affair with a man she wants to believe
is the perfect lover - except that he just may have
murdered both his previous wives. Despite her friend's
gushing description, Claire thinks "perfect lover" is
pushing it. Dick Cissel is a dentist, not a Don Juan. He
has some charm, but it gets dimmed by his sulky daughter
and the suspicions of a surly police chief. Captain
Gannett is determined to prove Dick drowned his first wife
and killed his beautiful second wife in a boat explosion.
Now Luanne wants Claire to establish conclusively that
Dick is no Bluebeard and, therefore, prime matrimonial
material. Setting aside her money worries for the time
being, Claire plunges into an investigation that she hopes
will lead to some vital clues that can document Dick's
innocence. But she is getting into dangerously over-her-
head hot water with some of the dirt she unearths about
the surprisingly unsaintly dead wives, the beady-eyed,
bird-watching neighbors, and a disturbingly sexy bird
doctor. And even when Claire's aviary excursion takes the
lid off a nest of greed, passion, and oh-so-clever murder,
there still remains one very menacing question for this
intrepid sleuth who's coming too close for a killer's
comfort: If Dick didn't murder his wives, who did? Once
again, Joan Hess combines her delightful narrative voice
with the ingenious plotting that has made her one of
today's preeminent mystery writers.
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