Praise for Shooting Star

• "Riggs's pleasing seventh Martha's Vineyard mystery finds her 92-year-old heroine, Victoria Trumbull, a poet and deputy police officer, becoming a playwright for a summertime stage adaptation of Frankenstein." — Publishers Weekly ...READ THE FULL REVIEW
   
• "Everyone is depicted in colorful broad strokes—drunken director, amiable local police, bright-eyed teens—and Victoria manages to feed and house most of them as well as solve mayhem and heartbreak." — Booklist ...READ THE FULL REVIEW
   
• "The seventh Martha's Vineyard mystery thriller is a fun lighthearted tale that fans of the series will fully enjoy." — Harriet Klausner ...READ THE FULL REVIEW
   

Praise for Indian Pipes

• "There are many levels on which to enjoy Cynthia Riggs's latest mystery... But it is the prose that makes the book sing." — The Martha's Vineyard Times ...READ THE FULL REVIEW
   
• "People are so nice in West Tisbury that even the villains seem less than evil — more like seriously naughty." — The New York Times ...READ THE FULL REVIEW
   
• "Lovely descriptions of the Vineyard in the fall, plenty of suspenseful action and a cast of eccentric supporting characters, including the bikers' tough college professor leader, help make this another winner." — Publishers Weekly ...READ THE FULL REVIEW
   
• "Victoria's official position, validated by the hat she now wears that reads, "West Tisbury, Police Deputy," has given her too much confidence, and she takes chances that horrify her boss" — St. Martin's Minotaur ...READ THE FULL REVIEW
   

Praise for The Paperwhite Narcissus

• "In addition to the usual colorful supporting cast of West Tisbury eccentrics, Riggs introduces an utterly charming new character, the grumbly William Botts. " — Booklist ...READ THE FULL REVIEW
   
• "When Colley Jameson, the harried, hard-drinking editor of the Island Enquirer, refuses to reinstate Victoria Trumbull's weekly column, even after the 92-year-old sheriff's deputy saves his life when his tie gets stuck in a printing press, Victoria offers her services elsewhere in Riggs's delightful fifth Martha's Vineyard mystery" — Publishers Weekly ...READ THE FULL REVIEW
   
• "A delightfully cozy read, steeped in rich characters and a sense of place, this latest Victoria Trumbull mystery is sure to charm long-time fans and first-time readers." — St. Martin's Minotaur ...READ THE FULL REVIEW
  

Praise for Jack in the Pulpit

• "Cynthia Riggs delivers one of the those rare novels that manages to combine a great story with a descriptive writing style...If you love to read, and you love to read a good detective/murder-mystery, then this book is for you." — Dan Blankenship, author of The Running Girl ...READ THE FULL REVIEW
   
• "A sensitive observer of the scene, Riggs writes with warmth and humor about all-too-human characters with whom readers can readily identify." — Publishers Weekly ...READ THE FULL REVIEW
   
• "In this fourth installment in her Victoria Trumbull series, Riggs offers a kind of prequel that explains why Victoria's granddaughter, Elizabeth, first came to live with her 92-year-old grandmother, and how Victoria became a deputy for the West Tisbury police." — by Jenny McLarin in Booklist ...READ THE FULL REVIEW
   
• "Victoria's boundless energy makes Jack in the Pulpit, Cynthia Riggs's fourth Martha's Vineyard mystery, a page-turner." — by Helen Phillips in The Vineyard Gazette ...READ THE FULL REVIEW

Praise for The Cemetery Yew

• "I stayed with the book until THE END, stopping neither to feed the cat nor turn on the evening alarms!" — by T.J. Straw in Mystery Reviews ...READ THE FULL REVIEW
   
• "[Riggs'] knowledge of Martha's Vineyard shines in the expert evocation of the picturesque community. As satisfying as a steaming bowl of chowder on a cold New England evening." — by Jenny McLarin in Booklist ...READ THE FULL REVIEW
   
• "Victoria Trumbull, the astute, 92-year-old Vineyard native and deputy police officer, takes on her most bizarre case yet, in Riggs's third appealing Vineyard mystery ." — Publishers Weekly ...READ THE FULL REVIEW
   
• "Victoria is the most realistic and the most delightful nonagenarian in mystery fiction. Her years have not blunted her intelligence and her sharp wit." — St. Martin's Minotaur ...READ THE FULL REVIEW
  

Praise for the The Cranefly Orchid Murders

• "Victoria Trumbull, a 92-year-old Martha's Vineyard native, deputy police officer and naturalist, continues to delight in this second outing (after 2001's Deadly Nightshade) from Vineyard native Riggs." — Publishers Weekly ...READ THE FULL REVIEW
   
• "The second appearance of 92-year-old Victoria Trumbull, amateur sleuth, upholds the promise of her first in Deadly Nightshade. Here, she and her young assistant look for a scarce plant that might provide clues to the murder of a local attorney. A great story." — Library Journal
   
• "Plucky 92-year-old Victoria Trumbull is back on the case in this satisfying follow-up to Riggs' series premiere, Deadly Night shade. This time she is trailing both a killer and a rare orchid. "
  — by Jenny McLarin in Booklist ...READ THE FULL REVIEW
   
• "Riggs . . .knows the Island—its flora, fauna, families, legends, customs and rumors—so well that every pace she puts her senior sleuth through becomes another delightful discovery." — Book Page
   
  
• "The author is well aware of the comedy involving people who take themselves seriously, and adds a nice satiric touch when describing the utopians, the environmentalists, the developers, the big-wigs and the would-be bigwigs. Once again, Ms. Riggs' knowledge of the Island and its people serves her and her readers well." — The Martha's Vineyard Times
   
• "Riggs is not afraid to describe elderly poet Victoria Trumbull realistically—wrinkles and all . . . first-rate plotting . . . wonderful cast of characters . . In addition to the endearing, yet never sentimentalized Victoria, the supporting figures are uniformly compelling and thoroughly believable. . . here's hoping Victoria Trumbull is solving crimes for many years to come." — ALA Booklist
   
• "To keep eager developers off Martha's Vineyard, poet-detective Victoria Trumbull searches for loopholes—and finds a patch of endangered cranefly orchids. But she also discovers one of the developers' underhanded lawyers pushing up daisies. And if Victoria isn't careful, a killer might take her off the endangered list-and make her extinct." — St. Martin's Minotaur

Praise for Deadly Nightshade

• "This unabridged reading of the author’s first Martha’s Vineyard mystery (originally published in 2001) introduces that most endearing and unlikely of sleuths, ninety-two-year-old Victoria Trumbull... The narrator, with her range of voices and grasp of natural speech patterns, is ideal for this leisurely paced tale." — by Edward Morris in ForeWord Magazine ...READ THE FULL REVIEW
   
• "[A] well-written mystery, with a host of very believable-as well as some very eccentric-characters...For a first novel, this one is quite special." — Mystery News
   
• "[A] well-written mystery, with a host of very believable-as well as some very eccentric-characters...For a first novel, this one is quite special." — Mystery News
   
• "Riggs shows her gift for characterizations that will have her audience clamoring for an ongoing series at least until Victoria turns one hundred." — Midwest Book Review
   
• "First-rate plotting notwithstanding, it is Riggs's wonderful cast of characters that brings her novel to life . . Here's hoping Victoria Trumbull is solving crimes for many years to come." — ALA Booklist
   
• "Feisty, fiercely independent nonagenarian Victoria Trumbull makes a welcome debut in Riggs's first novel ... The book's dedicatee, Donis Coffin Riggs (1898-1997), native Vineyarder and poet, would seem to be the model for Victoria. Everyone should have such a terrific grandmother." — Publisher's Weekly
  

Riggs's pleasing seventh Martha's Vineyard mystery (after 2006's Indian Pipes) finds her 92-year-old heroine, Victoria Trumbull, a poet and deputy police officer, becoming a playwright for a summertime stage adaptation of Frankenstein. The amateur theatrical troupe — which includes such locals as DEA agent Howland Atherton (playing the monster) and high school student Dawn Haines (playing Frankenstein's bride) — prepares for opening night under the dictatorial leadership of artistic director Dearborn Hall.

The production is beset by tragedy when its eight-year-old star, Teddy Vanderhoop, goes missing, and his neighbor, also an actress in the show, is found murdered. Demoralized by the death and disappearance, much of the cast drops out, but Dearborn insists the show must go on — with farcical results. Riggs delivers yet another irresistible beach read.

- Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

This lightly plotted mystery is full of the flora, fauna, and aroma of Martha's Vineyard. The owlish Victoria Trumbull, poet, police deputy, and playwright at age 92, is horrified when her version of Frankenstein, written for the local community theater, turns from social commentary to farce—and cast members keep dying.

Everyone is depicted in colorful broad strokes—drunken director, amiable local police, bright-eyed teens—and Victoria manages to feed and house most of them as well as solve mayhem and heartbreak. A lot about the joys of community theater is tucked in among the soup, rescued puppies, and ugly divorces.

- Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved.

The seventh Martha's Vineyard mystery thriller is a fun lighthearted tale that fans of the series will fully enjoy. Besides insight into the original Frankenstein, the whodunit is shrewdly set up from almost the onset keeping readers wondering who and why.

SHOOTING STAR is a wonderful amateur sleuth tale (although the feisty heroine has become certified as a graduate of the Tisbury Citizen Police Academy) that will have the audience applauding for encore performances.

- Copyright © Harriet Klausner

This unabridged reading of the author’s first Martha’s Vineyard mystery (originally published in 2001) introduces that most endearing and unlikely of sleuths, ninety-two-year-old Victoria Trumbull. She’s a well-regarded poet who puts her keen powers of observation to work after she hears a murder being committed one evening in the harbor at Oak Bluffs, where her granddaughter, Elizabeth, is the assistant harbormaster. The victim turns out to be Bernie Marble, a town official and hotel owner who may have been involved in transporting drugs, skimming harbor receipts, and other unsavory enterprises. More bodies will be dropping before the puzzle is finally solved.

Because the Oak Bluffs police chief is Marble’s business partner and generally thought to be crooked himself, Trumbull teams up with Domingo, the harbormaster and former New York cop, to investigate the murder. There is no shortage of suspects. In addition to the shady police chief, there’s a menacing townie named Meatloaf; a former MIT prof with a sleek yacht and a $5 million Vineyard home purportedly purchased from his software-design fortune; and the hulking Dojan Minnowfish, a member of the island’s Wampanoag tribe who takes a liking to Trumbull when he discovers she was a friend of his great-grandmother.

The author, a thirteenth-generation resident of Martha’s Vineyard, based the character of Victoria on her mother, the poet and newspaper columnist Dionis Coffin Riggs, who died in 1997 at the age of ninety-eight. Given such grounding, it’s only natural that the island itself becomes a major character, one that Riggs depicts with exquisite attention to details, sounds, and colors. She even provides an amusing Greek chorus via the patrons of the Artcliff Diner, an actual eatery in the town of Vineyard Haven. Their wry conversations about local personalities and goings-on are priceless.

The narrator, with her range of voices and grasp of natural speech patterns, is ideal for this leisurely paced tale. Rather than mimicking the clipped New England accent, her characters sound English, some with overtones of Welsh. The mixture works, enabling her to move smoothly from Trumbull’s more refined musings to Domingo’s gruff profanity without descending into caricature.

A few incidents in the book seem contrived—such as the final confrontation scene around Trumbull’s dinner table—but this is still a rousing good yarn and ample evidence of Riggs’s extraordinary gift for intrigue and description. She has since authored five more engaging Vineyard mysteries, including The Paperwhite Narcissus and Indian Pipes.

- Copyright © ForeWord Magazine.

There are many levels on which to enjoy Cynthia Riggs's latest mystery, "Indian Pipes." If you love the Vineyard it is great fun to read about familiar places, some not so familiar, and to try to guess who the characters might be. There is the twisting and turning plot of a good murder mystery. And there is prose, beautifully written, by a wonderful writer.

Cynthia Riggs is a thirteenth-generation Islander. She lives here year-round and runs a B&B and workshops for writers and poets in her family home, The Cleaveland House, in West Tisbury. So her stories have the feel of the Island. Her dirt roads lead to secret places and her characters seem familiar. Her detective, Victoria Trumbull, is clearly a paean to her mother, poet Dionis Coffin Riggs. Reading of Victoria's adventures, gestures, attitudes, and common sense, I vividly picture Mrs. Riggs as I remember her.

The basic plot involves Wampanoag tribal politics, the issue of casino gambling, a motorcycle rally held on the Island, and of course, a murder. That brings sibling rivalries and an inheritance into the mix. The characters are well drawn and colorful, their motives understandable. In the New York Times Sunday Book Review, reviewer Marilyn Stasio wrote, "People are so nice in West Tisbury that even the villains seem less than evil - more like seriously naughty."

But it is the prose that makes the book sing. Here is a description of Victoria and her granddaughter, Elizabeth, entering a house down on one of West Tisbury's south shore coves: "The entry was hung with coats and yellow slickers, a denim carpenter's apron, a couple of

baseball caps. Three or four fishing rods, a kayak paddle, and a pair of oars were propped against the inner door, and a collection of lures, most of them old looking, lined a shelf. Spider webs festooned the ceiling, wedded the sleeve of one coat to another, strung the lines of the fishing rods together. The splintery wood floor, partially covered with a worn piece of linoleum, had a collection of hip boots, waders, and worn leather boots, their rusty eyelets laced with rawhide thongs, green with mold."

As the plot thickens, Victoria uses all her wiles and courage to trap the killer. While waiting, however, she is often found sitting quietly on a rock or against a tree trunk, writing poetry in her ever-present notebook. The development of her sestina, "a poem with six lines and a final triplet, all stanzas having the same six words at the line ends in six different sequences," according to my Oxford English Dictionary, weaves its way throughout the book. I felt disappointed never to be able to read the completed sestina and remain curious about its development, but I must remember that this is a work of fiction. Maybe there was no sestina.

As I read along, I never figured out who the murderer was, which to me, an inveterate murder mystery reader, is the mark of a good plot, so I was quite satisfied at the eventual denouement. Victoria and her collection of associate sleuths orchestrated an exciting ending. And I was grateful for a bout of insomnia, which gave me an extra few hours of middle-of-the-night reading time in this busy summer season. If you don't have insomnia, I am sure a beach chair or hammock will do just fine for a perfect summer afternoon with a good book like this one.

- Copyright © The Martha's Vineyard Times.

... [The Cape Cod] region is currently awash in fictional murder and mayhem. Cynthia Riggs's INDIAN PIPES (Thomas Dunne/St. Martin's Minotaur, $22.95) is typical of the cozy mysteries inspired by the picturesque charms of Martha's Vineyard, with its quiet coves and quaint cottages. Victoria Trumbull, the 92-year-old sleuth in this series, is the most tolerant person in West Tisbury on issues ranging

from a neighbor's homosexuality to an Indian tribe's proposal for a gambling casino. But when an engineer performing soil tests on tribal land is found dead at the bottom of a 200-foot cliff, Victoria realizes it's up to her to save her beloved community from destroying itself. People are so nice in West Tisbury that even the villains seem less than evil — more like seriously naughty.

This is an excerpt from The New York Times Book Review, Murder for Relaxation on June 4, 2006.
- Copyright © The New York Times Company.

At the start of Riggs's warm and witty sixth Martha's Vineyard mystery to feature Victoria Trumbull (after 2005's The Paperwhite Narcissus), the feisty 92-year-old deputy sheriff stumbles on the body of a neighbor, reclusive engineer Jube Burkhardt, who appears to have fallen to his death from a cliff. Two days earlier, Jube attended a meeting of the local Wampanoag tribal council about testing soil for a prospective casino's septic system. Not surprisingly, many islanders oppose the casino project. The

arrival of a gang of motorcyclists who like to stunt-ride further raises the temperature. Victoria's investigation leads her to a second body, a burning house, a missing computer and considerable personal peril. Lovely descriptions of the Vineyard in the fall, plenty of suspenseful action and a cast of eccentric supporting characters, including the bikers' tough college professor leader, help make this another winner.

- Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Dense fog shrouds the colorful clay cliffs of Gay Head on the westernmost end of the Island as 92-year-old poet Victoria Trumbull becomes involved in her sixth Martha's Vineyard Mystery.

She and her granddaughter Elizabeth are taking a break before heading home after visiting a too talkative friend. As they stand by the fence savoring the fresh sea air, the rays from the lighthouse above them illuminate something that seems to be moving far below. Victoria can only catch glimpses through gaps in the streaming fog in the rotating red and white beams.

Victoria and her Wampanoag friend Dojan Minnowfish, who has returned to the Island from exile in Washington, D.C., try to prevent a series of baffling murders that seem to have something to do with a Harley Davidson and Indian motorcycle rally,

tribal members fighting for and against an Island gambling casino, landowners concerned about escalating property taxes, developers squabbling over land, and deeply buried family secrets surfacing.

Victoria, a deputy police officer, has proved her value to Island crime fighting. She knows almost everybody on the Island, is related to most of them, and knows who's not speaking to whom and why.

But her official position, validated by the hat she now wears that reads, "West Tisbury, Police Deputy," has given her too much confidence, and she takes chances that horrify her boss, Chief Mary Kathleen (Casey) O'Neill. Victoria compensates for her physical limitations by outthinking the bad guys every time -- or almost every time.

- Copyright © St. Martin's Minotaur. All rights reserved.

Fans of Riggs' Martha's Vineyard mysteries already love the series' ninety-something protagonist, Victoria Trumbull. This fifth adventure will only strengthen that bond. The delightful Victoria is at her best here, confronting Colley Jameson, the obnoxious editor of the Island Enquirer, who has threatened to replace her West Tisbury news column with a younger person's outlook. Then, when Colley begins receiving odd obituaries about himself that coincide with murders occurring in the area, he reluctantly hires Victoria to investigate. As Victoria tries to figure out who is responsible for three

murders and the threats against Colley, numerous suspects appear, including bitter ex-wives and one greedy ex-husband. In addition to the usual colorful supporting cast of West Tisbury eccentrics, Riggs introduces an utterly charming new character, the grumbly William Botts. Founder and editor of the one-page Island Grackle, Botts leads a simple life--until Victoria begins writing for him and causes his subscriber numbers to skyrocket. As usual, Riggs paints a thoroughly compelling picture of island life. Like Victoria, this series gets more charming with age. - Jenny McLarin

- Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved.

When Colley Jameson, the harried, hard-drinking editor of the Island Enquirer, refuses to reinstate Victoria Trumbull's weekly column, even after the 92-year-old sheriff's deputy saves his life when his tie gets stuck in a printing press, Victoria offers her services elsewhere in Riggs's delightful fifth Martha's Vineyard mystery (after 2004's Jack in the Pulpit ). William Botts, editor of the West Tisbury Grackle , a one-page news sheet that sells for a dime, is happy to take on Victoria as an unpaid reporter, especially after she scoops the Enquirer with a story about two

halves of a body found at widely separated locations. The deceased turns out to be an unloved developer, and the plot soon thickens with a fatal poisoning, threatening letters, disgruntled ex-wives and a third murder. By this point in the series, Riggs has achieved an easy style and comfortable pace that perfectly suit her heroine. Vineyard watchers may miss the focus on environmental concerns of earlier books, but they'll be relieved to find that the Enquirer and Grackle bear no resemblance to the two actual Martha's Vineyard newspapers.

- Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

In this fifth book in the Victoria Trumbull series, the ninety-two-year-old sleuth finds herself embroiled in a series of murders after she is fired from her job as West Tisbury correspondent for The Island Enquirer (the editor claims the newspaper needs a younger look).

Victoria, determined to show that age is no barrier to newspapering, immediately throws her weight behind The Grackle, intent on turning the two-page West Tisbury newsletter into a formidable competitor of the Enquirer. And it looks as though she will.

In the meantime, the Enquirer's narcissistic editor has been receiving a series of obituaries, each naming him as the deceased. He would dismiss them as a sick joke, but the obituaries follow the actual deaths of people close to him. Rather than going to the police, he grudgingly rehires Victoria to

uncover the identity of the obituary writer. Victoria knows almost everybody on the Island, and she may be the only person who can solve the mystery before the editor needs a genuine obituary of his own.

In The Paperwhite Narcissus, as in the four previous books in the series, Cynthia Riggs explores the rich and varied setting of Martha's Vineyard in a way that only a native Islander can. The story glides from Wasque, the desolate southeast corner of Chappaquiddick, to the Coast Guard boat ramp in Menemsha; from the elegantly maintained Captains' houses in Edgartown to the wild Atlantic Ocean beach at Quansoo.

A delightfully cozy read, steeped in rich characters and a sense of place, this latest Victoria Trumbull mystery is sure to charm long-time fans and first-time readers.

- Copyright © St. Martin's Minotaur. All rights reserved.

August 2004

Cynthia Riggs delivers one of the those rare novels that manages to combine a great story with a descriptive writing style. Too many narratives that provide vivid imagery to the surrounding environment, in which their story takes place, lose the emphasis on plot development.

The main character (Victoria Trumbull) in this fine work is a ninety-two-year-old resident of West Tisbury (Martha's Vineyard Mystery Series) with a sharp mind and a lot of attitude. I found myself enjoying Victoria's character development throughout the entire novel. She reminded me of so many people I have met over the years. Her stubbornness and bluntness make her a character who you enjoy learning more about. I think we all have a little of Victoria Trumbull in all of us.

There are three things I look for in a novel; this one has all three:

1. A great entry. Jack in the Pulpit does that on page one. Bravo to Cynthia Riggs! A first few paragraphs that grab you into the story, and she didn't have to rely on profanity, sex, or a disgusting murder scene on that first page to do so. If your not sure what I am talking about - go to the best-seller fiction rack and look at the first pages of most of the novels. They usually have the "F" word, a murder, or a graphic sexual comment on the first page; not all of them, but a LOT of them.

2. Characters who you would love to meet in person - if they were actually real. Riggs manages to do that with a lot of the characters in this novel. There are a few characters that needed a bit more development (e.g. Victoria's artistic renters), but for the most part, this novel does a great job of character development.

3. Keeping the story moving along while it grabs the reader into the surrounding environment. I have a hard time reading anything by Charles Dickens because his writing becomes so descriptive that the story-line disappears inside a honeycomb of surroundings. By the time some authors finish describing a room, you forget why the protagonist entered the room in the first place. I believe Cynthia Riggs has found the perfect balance in her writing. I can picture the surroundings without forgetting why it is important to the story.

I don't want to give away the plot of this fictional work by going into too much detail, but it is a murder-mystery that has more than one story going on at a time. Victoria's granddaughter, Elizabeth, comes to stay with her after her marriage heads south. People in West Tisbury begin to die (no I'm not telling you more about that) and Police Chief Casey Casey O'Neill is forced to except Victoria's theory that someone is actually murdering certain citizens of the normally quite town.

Riggs vivid, verbal paintings of the beautiful surroundings in the backdrop of this story are second to none. Got to give this author her PROPS, she can be brilliant.

If you love to read, and you love to read a good detective/murder-mystery, then this book is for you. You'll find Jack in the Pulpit to be a pleasure to read.

Fall is a splendid season on Martha's Vineyard, with spectacular views of land and sea in the ever-changing light. The sudden death of four people in one month, all parishioners at the same church, however, upsets the island's tranquility. In Riggs's absorbing fourth Vineyard mystery (after 2003's Cemetery Yew), Victoria Trumbull, the wise and sprightly nonagenarian island native, is caught in the middle of a jealous battle between the new minister and the retiring minister (both named Jack) at the community church. The ministers' wives are spreading gossip about the four deceased, all of

whom provided handsomely for the church. If Victoria's granddaughter, a fugitive from a vengeful and abusive husband, adds to her worries, Victoria can take solace in her developing friendship with the new, city-bred police chief. A complex, well-paced plot, involving a never-mentioned grandparent, an auto accident, a dead seagull and a basket of mushrooms, comes to a neat resolution. A sensitive observer of the scene, Riggs writes with warmth and humor about all-too-human characters with whom readers can readily identify.

- Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

In this fourth installment in her Victoria Trumbull series, Riggs offers a kind of prequel that explains why Victoria's granddaughter, Elizabeth, first came to live with her 92-year-old grandmother, and how Victoria became a deputy for the West Tisbury police. While the town's old and new ministers—both named Jack—try to forge a positive relationship, West Tisbury's residents are dropping like flies. Four people die within a short time, and all appear to have eaten gifts of food. New police chief Casey O'Neill relies on Victoria, who knows the town and everyone

in it, to help her figure out what's going on. Meanwhile, Elizabeth is stalked by her psychotic ex-husband, and Victoria is feuding with the "Meals on Wheels" driver with whom she had a fender-bender. Readers who appreciate Riggs' incorporation of the flora and fauna of Martha's Vineyard into her stories will be pleased that this tale also features evocative descriptions of island plants and birds. This pleasant trip back in time will give Victoria's fans a better appreciation of the notable nonagenarian.

- Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved.

Ninety-two-year-old Victoria Trumbull reads to the "elderly" at the hospital; unapologetically crashes into the Meals on Wheels van; defends her granddaughter, Elizabeth, from an abusive husband; drinks beer at 10 a.m.; oversees the blossoming of a romance between her two male boarders; calmly dissects a seagull corpse; doesn't "envy anybody anything"; becomes an official police deputy, and figures out what mushroom quiche has to do with the September deaths of four members of a tightly knit Vineyard community.

Victoria's boundless energy makes Jack in the Pulpit, Cynthia Riggs's fourth Martha's Vineyard mystery, a page-turner. Because it's impossible to predict where the young-at-heart heroine is headed next, there is an irresistable temptation to follow close on her heels and find out.

It is difficult to tell whether Victoria is the sidekick to the new female police chief, Casey O'Neill, or vice versa. Either way, the caring-yet-feisty rapport between the two women is at the heart of the novel.

Ms. Riggs, a thirteenth-generation Islander, imbues Jack in the Pulpit with her vast knowledge of all life forms on the Vineyard, from the plants and flowers to the lively local characters. For off-Islanders, this book is an excellent way to get acquainted with the small-town lifestyle and natural environment of the Island. The author's detailed descriptions of the Vineyard's September flora may even sway a few summer residents to stay an extra month. For Islanders, the book will strike very close to home.

As Victoria and Chief O'Neill puzzle through the mystery, they face the charms and frustrations of living in a community where everyone is either a blood relative, a neighbor or both. Ms. Riggs manages to critique small-town living while simultaneously expressing a deep tenderness for it.

The mysterious deaths themselves hinge on the generosity of the Islanders. The novel grapples with the question of how a town steeped in tradition can cope with the arrival of newcomers, such as wash-ashore Chief O'Neill and the new Reverend Jack, both of whom have important community positions.

It also addresses the need to reconcile a simple, old-fashioned way of life with modern complexities. When is it time to put locks on the doors? When does Elizabeth's ex-husband, Lockwood, become a dangerous stalker rather than an accepted, albeit lovelorn, member of the community? When should home-cooked dishes left by friendly neighbors be tested for poison?

But Ms. Riggs's novel is more than an in-depth exploration of the darker side of Vineyard life. The crowning achievement of the book is her ability to create compassion for all the characters, including the villains. Her characters are rich and complex, an effect created by the many points of view she presents. The reader spends time looking at the situation from the perspective of such questionable figures as Lockwood and Reverend Jack.

We are inside the self-righteous Lockwood's head as he anxiously prowls around Victoria's house, searching for Elizabeth, whom he refers to as "the bitch."

We are with Reverend Jack when he carefully hides his copy of Hustler underneath a stack of Bible lessons. Later, we watch Lockwood muse over the nice things he'll do for Elizabeth when she comes back to him, such as baking her a quiche.

We watch Reverend Jack deliver food to Lockwood, on whom he's taken pity.

Ms. Riggs rescues her characters from occasional tendencies toward one-dimensionality by showing them in both generous and corrupt moments.

The last 15 pages of Jack in the Pulpit are packed with small revelations and a shocking climax. The mystery is satisfying in itself, but the most striking element of the conclusion is the compassion with which our heroine treats the murderer.

Ms. Riggs's writing style, like Victoria herself, is straightforward and clever. The tone is always tongue-in-cheek. The author mocks the mystery genre while delighting in it.

At the end, Victoria proudly claims, "I did a denouement, like Nero Wolfe." There's a lot to like about Jack in the Pulpit, from the Vineyard mood to the vivid cast of characters to the intricate plot, but Victoria Trumbull's sassiness is what makes the book great. By the end of the novel, one may be tempted—like Elizabeth, like Victoria's two boarders—to move in under Victoria's roof and be right there to see what scheme she'll cook up next.

- The Vineyard Gazette, June 25, 2004

The fact that the author has thirteen generations of Islanders behind her convinces you beyond any shadow of doubt that she knows her material from the get-go. Martha's Vineyard, that splendid triangular Atlantic island located south of Cape Cod, between the Elizabeth Islands and Nantucket, is a major character in The Cemetery Yew, as is the weather.

New to this widely-acclaimed series by Cynthia Riggs, I turned to Chapter 1 with eager anticipation. Needless to say, enchanted by the nonagenarian protagonist, Victoria Trumbull, I stayed with the book until THE END, stopping neither to feed the cat nor turn on the evening alarms!

Victoria is planting tulip bulbs on her husband's grave when she hears noises nearby. Walking with her stick, she wends her way among the gravestones and finds the daughter of the cemetery superintendent and a workman at an empty grave under a yew tree. Ordered to dig up a ten-year-old coffin and send it to Milwaukee, they've found only an empty grave. An off-island hearse is due the next day to pick up the coffin. But a major storm ties up the East Coast transportation and the hearse driver disappears off the ferry. Victoria may be 92, but she lets no grass grow under her feet. Not only does she cook supper for her divorced granddaughter, who has moved in with her, but she writes a weekly column for the local paper and sometimes rents rooms to paying guests.

Her neighbor's pushy cousin moves in, a noisy toucan in tow. The woman pretends she's undergoing chemotherapy, taking Taxol, a derivative of the poisonous yew. The illness is fake, but Victoria does not know this at the time and graciously serves the woman tea and gingersnaps.

Because Victoria knows all about the convoluted relationships of the townspeople, the new off-Islander police chief has appointed the elderly

woman her deputy, and when the case of the missing corpse and coffin heats up in the local town Victoria is right in the center of the search. She locates the coffin, but it disappears again and several people who gather around the coffin search are found brutally murdered.

As I noted earlier, the Island and its weather are major players in this story. Riggs' descriptions are poetic and beautifully written. 'A heavy ground fog had settled over the meadow, like grayish-white soup. From the cookroom window, Victoria watched the fog lap against the entry's stone steps. The pasture cedars floated out of the mist.'

The plot thickens. The DEA, the CIA, the Foreign Service, ties with Colombia, a contract killer, West Virginia sand, uncut gemstones worth ten million dollars, poisonous yerba mate, a hit list, false IDs, anagrams—all are pieces of the puzzle of the missing coffin.

Here and there the story is colored with charming humor. The cat 'headed for the door and waited for some house servant to let him out.'

Either by design or by happenstance, the author penned the last line of the book in such a way we already imagine a follow-up to this volume. 'I wonder if we'll ever meet again.' Yes, Cynthia Riggs, this is a marvelous segue. We liked that man!

In her mystery series of Martha's Vineyard Riggs more than holds her own in the growing circle of major writers who use this island as their setting—Philip Craig's books, including his story written with William Tapply, First Light, and the novels of Linda Fairstein, where she sets part of the story on the Island.

We concur with critics from Publishers Weekly and the ALA Booklist—here's to a long line of Victoria Trumbull books.

- Lady M's Mystery International T.J.'s Winner's Circle, October 2003

Can a 92-year-old protagonist engage readers of all ages? Definitely, as proven in this third adventure featuring nonagenarian Victoria Trumbull. As the snow begins to fly in the quaint village of West Tisbury on Martha's Vineyard, Victoria welcomes a visitor to her cozy home. Dahlia Atherton, on the island to visit her cousin Howland, moves in with Victoria when Howland's house proves too dusty and drafty. Dahlia's arrival coincides with the exhumation of a coffin supposedly containing the remains of a suicide victim. After the coffin is found to contain only sandbags, many people connected to it either

disappear or are murdered. When Victoria's houseguest appears to have something to hide, the spunky sleuth puts her detective powers to work to uncover the whole story. Once again, Riggs introduces entertaining supporting characters, including town selectmen Denny Rhodes and Lucretia "Noodles" Woods. Her native's knowledge of Martha's Vineyard shines in the expert evocation of the picturesque community. As satisfying as a steaming bowl of chowder on a cold New England evening.

- Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved.

Victoria Trumbull, the astute, 92-year-old Vineyard native and deputy police officer, takes on her most bizarre case yet, in Riggs's third appealing Vineyard mystery (after 2002's The Cranefly Orchid Murders). An empty grave, a misplaced coffin and a missing hearse driver are the harbingers of a series of grotesque murders, whose victims turn out to share an odd South American connection involving smuggling and an exotic bird. The author lends ballast to an outlandish plot by lovingly depicting

ordinary island people (awkward teens, a friendly police chief, small-town officials with their rivalries and gossips) and events (notably the return of the local high school football team from the big game against Nantucket). The unfamiliar portrait of the Vineyard in winter is another plus. With patience and charm, the down-to-earth Victoria succeeds in drawing out confidences. In the end, even she is surprised.

- Copyright © 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. All rights reserved.

There's more than one reason the new West Tisbury police chief officially made 92-year old Victoria Trumbull her deputy. For one thing, Victoria knows just about everything about everyone in town, and a lot about the rest of the Martha's Vineyard year-round population as well. Not to mention their ancestors. Victoria may be afflicted with the usual aches and pains that descend on nonagenarians (she has a cutoff shoe to accommodate her bunion, and a stout stick to help her on her walks across the fields and in the woods). But she is as sharp and as sharpeyed as the proverbial tack. So it's not odd that when Victoria is the only one who notices something amiss among the gravestones of the West Tisbury cemetery, the chief listens.

Something is indeed amiss. Responding to a request by presumed relatives in the Midwest to disinter a coffin for reburying elsewhere, things go wrong from the start. The driver of the hearse coming to collect the coffin disappears during the Island ferry

trip in a rainstorm. Other deaths - some of them irrefutably murder, the others suspicious - follow. And when as a last measure the coffin is found, dug up and opened, it does not contain the expected body. Insult upon injury, the coffin itself disappears.

Meanwhile, the available for rent bedroom in Victoria's house has been taken over by a woman relative of one of their neighbors and her raucous toucan, a bird as spoiled as the most bratty millionaire's heir. Victoria is graceful about her unwanted boarders; but they do interfere with the column she writes for the local newspaper and with her efforts to discover whether the strange antics of the coffin are related to the murders.

Victoria is the most realistic and the most delightful nonagenarian in mystery fiction. Her years have not blunted her intelligence and her sharp wit. We're lucky that she's still around and seems to be set for a long time.

- Copyright © St. Martin's Minotaur. All rights reserved.

Victoria Trumbull, a 92-year-old Martha's Vineyard native, deputy police officer and naturalist, continues to delight in this second outing (after 2001's Deadly Nightshade) from Vineyard native Riggs. Lonely recluse Phoebe Eldredge decides to sell 200 acres of beautiful, unspoiled land to a developer rather than leave it to her descendents, in particular her crass, rude granddaughter, whose arrival on the island triggers the well-paced action. Because Massachusetts has a law against destroying endangered plants, Victoria, an avid walker, goes in search of a rare plant, any rare plant, on Phoebe's property in order to forestall development, but first she stumbles on a decayed corpse, which proves tobe that of sleazy lawyer Montgomery Mausz. Victoria's new sidekick, an 11-year-old boy named

Robin, makes a worthy companion, leading her to unexpected island nooks. A stranger pinned under a storm-toppled tree in Victoria's driveway, an avaricious developer married to a Nevada showgirl, a recovering Vietnam veteran, earnest botanists, naive town officials, a clique of golfing doctors all are involved, but not all are what they seem. Amid dealings and double-dealings, the body count rises. The author's prodigious fund of natural lore, both plant and animal, complements her authentic portrait of the Vineyard's human community, complete with a chorus of locals on the porch of a West Tisbury landmark, Alley's general store. Bits of sly humor and wordplay add to the fun. This mystery unfolds as nicely as the Vineyard spring it so lovingly depicts.

- Copyright © 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. All rights reserved.

Plucky 92-year-old Victoria Trumbull is back on the case in this satisfying follow-up to Riggs' series premiere, Deadly Night shade. This time she is trailing both a killer and a rare orchid. Victoria is enjoying spring on Martha's Vineyard until she stumbles upon the decomposing body of attorney Montgomery "Mickey" Mausz. It soon becomes apparent that the murder has something to do with a bitter struggle over the valuable property of elderly Phoebe Eldredge. When Phoebe is tricked into selling the land to a greedy developer, leaders

of the conservation group enlist Victoria to find rare plants—namely, a Cranefly orchid—on the property that might block the developer's plans for a housing development. The suspense builds as a man is caught spying on Victoria's house, and she and her 11-year-old assistant are befriended by a mysterious character living in the woods. Readers who enjoyed the charming series debut will be delighted to get another dose of Victoria's sharp tongue.

- Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved.