Just Add Nauseam, Death at the Dinner Party

This detective novel is seeking a publisher. Just Add Nauseam, Death at the Dinner Party has been described as 'a gentle satire on 1930s detective fiction, reminiscent of Alexander McCall Smith.

If interested, please contact the author or her North American literary agent Pat Poland, Writers' Ink/Media, 514 Northwood Dr, Conroe, TX 77303 USA. Phone +1 936-499-4625, email patpoland@yahoo.com. Please visit Pat's website: http://www.writersinkliteraryagency.com/

Synopsis

‘Bring my killer to justice!’ With these words, Caterina Hungerford of Hornbeam Hall bursts into the study of an old country home in present-day Tasmania and shatters the hard-won peace and quiet with which bachelor and amateur detective Quaminus Frye surrounds himself. He’d rather be preparing a presentation to the Royal Society and indulging his secret vices: harbouring asylum seekers and continuing his love affair with his sister-in-law.

‘Bring my killer to justice!’

These words lead Quaminus, who uses handwriting analysis to solve crimes, to a weekend house party at the Hungerford estate. The guests risk having their lives ruined if Caterina lets fly at Saturday’s blue-food dinner party. Let fly she does and die she does, slumping lifelessly to the floor before the dessert course. Quaminus must determine whether it was murder, an accident or suicide by allergy. Did poison lurk in the Turquack? Was something lethal injected into the Lavender Mash?

As he sorts through the suspects, Quaminus encounters painful truths about old friends and about himself better left undisturbed.

The unusual suspects in the death of Caterina Hungerford:
1. Bolla Lester-Norman, flamboyant widow of distant Hungerford relative Brigadier Clive, never travels anywhere without her stuffed giraffe and Toblerone chocolate.
2. Anthea Hungerford Fitzadam, Caterina’s tight-lipped tennis-playing sister-in-law would do anything to protect the family name.
3. Guy Fitzadam, her property developer husband of questionable antecedents, had an exuberant youth.
4. Ornamentalist Meredith Eastmeadowson, Caterina’s childhood friend, elbows desperately at the guilty ties that bind.
5. Meredith's paleoclimatologist husband Roddy Eastmeadowson calls himself a ‘scientist with balls.’
6. Ted Hungerford, Caterina’s farmer husband, has a chat-room alter ego as Mr Diddy P.

All the suspects know about Caterina’s life-threatening allergy. All have the opportunity to insert a stalk of potentially lethal fava-bean flower into the centrepiece on the table at Saturday’s dinner.

Enter Dwayne Luke, an ambitious firewood feral turned computer whiz who hacks into Caterina’s computer to find the information Quaminus needs to crack the case. Quaminus traverses scenic Tasmania to ‘Bring my killer to justice.’ He grills a brace of supporting characters, from an old druggie to an egotistical pastry chef.

The secrets Caterina knew provided motives a-plenty for her death, including prostitution, poisoning and an old will never found. Quaminus confronts the suspects at Hornbeam Hall after Caterina’s memorial service. All were guilty in some way, but there was one ultimate culprit who done it.

Quaminus emerges victorious from a last battle with his conscience when he decides to tell Detective Sergeant Boyle of Tasmania Police a version of the truth (and there are so many) that will allow them both to sleep at night, thereby ensuring that justice is served, and the meal is blue.