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Martha's Vineyard Mystery #3
The Cemetery Yew
Now officially deputized, 92-year-old Victoria Trumbull must dig up clues to find a missing corpse.
272 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published September 1, 2003
5 people are currently reading
200 people want to read
About the author
Cynthia Riggs
27 books122 followersCynthia Riggs, a tall gray-haired and imposing figure, is a 13th generation Islander, the mother of five and daughter of author and poet Dionis Coffin Riggs and school principal and printmaker Sidney N. Riggs.
With a degree in geology, her own remarkable resumé -- writing for the National Geographic Society and Smithsonian (she spent two months in Antarctica), working in public relations for the American Petroleum Institute, operating boat charters (she lived on a 44-foot houseboat for 12 years), running the Chesapeake Bay Ferry Boat Company, and being a rigger at Martha's Vineyard Shipyard. After enrolling six years ago in the Master of Fine Arts creative writing program at Vermont College, Riggs found yet another calling. She has become a successful mystery writer.
All her mysteries take place on the Vineyard, and all draw from local scenes and fictionalized composites of Island characters. She knows them all well, having been a two-time candidate for West Tisbury selectman ("No, I don't think I'll do that again"), a commissioner on the Martha's Vineyard Commission, a member of what is now the Martha's Vineyard Arts Council, and an active Island voice in both politics and human rights causes.
With a degree in geology, her own remarkable resumé -- writing for the National Geographic Society and Smithsonian (she spent two months in Antarctica), working in public relations for the American Petroleum Institute, operating boat charters (she lived on a 44-foot houseboat for 12 years), running the Chesapeake Bay Ferry Boat Company, and being a rigger at Martha's Vineyard Shipyard. After enrolling six years ago in the Master of Fine Arts creative writing program at Vermont College, Riggs found yet another calling. She has become a successful mystery writer.
All her mysteries take place on the Vineyard, and all draw from local scenes and fictionalized composites of Island characters. She knows them all well, having been a two-time candidate for West Tisbury selectman ("No, I don't think I'll do that again"), a commissioner on the Martha's Vineyard Commission, a member of what is now the Martha's Vineyard Arts Council, and an active Island voice in both politics and human rights causes.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 64 reviews
August 2, 2021
I wanted to try one of the 14 books of this series set on Martha's Vineyard as it is still summer and one likes to think of the Vineyard and/or the Cape at this time of year. I listened to this author's talk broadcast on Moth, https://themoth.org/storytellers/cynt..., and I was totally charmed by her story of lost love found.
So...I really don't enjoy cozy mysteries for the most part. This one is quite an elaborate game of hide and seek involving 10 million dollars worth of gems in the guise of a dead body buried in a cemetery that becomes the focus of a very large cast of wily characters. I probably should have started with the first book for introduction to the smart lady of the series, a 92-year old poet with a large house full of revolving guests and townies. There is plenty of winter weather to contend with as well as a good deal of action. A lively story!
So...I really don't enjoy cozy mysteries for the most part. This one is quite an elaborate game of hide and seek involving 10 million dollars worth of gems in the guise of a dead body buried in a cemetery that becomes the focus of a very large cast of wily characters. I probably should have started with the first book for introduction to the smart lady of the series, a 92-year old poet with a large house full of revolving guests and townies. There is plenty of winter weather to contend with as well as a good deal of action. A lively story!
March 24, 2015
A fun cemetery mystery with twists and turns and nice, quirky characters.
January 16, 2014
Life on the Vinyard ought to be quiet, but somehow things don't work out that way. West Tisbury is home to Victoria Trumbull, 92 years old, not as physically agile as she used to be, but mentally scarily sharp--and she knows nearly everyone, or at least their families and the family history. That's why Casey, the Chief of Police hired from off-island, has appointed Victoria as her deputy.
The cemetery director, also town selectman, Denny Rhodes, gets a seemingly ordinary request from a family no longer living on island to have the coffin of a family member who committed suicide ten years ago disinterred. Now that no one is left on the island, they want to move her to Wisconsin, where they are now living. Not an issue at all--until the coffin is found to be empty except for some bags of perfectly ordinary sand.
Meanwhile, Victoria's neighbor, Howland Atherton, learns that his cousin Dahlia, whom he is not fond of, is coming for an extended visit. She's retired from the Foreign Service, is suffering from cancer, and wants to be treated at the hospital in the town where she grew up. She brings with her her pet toucan, Bacchus--and Bacchus and Howland don't like each other, to say the least. Nor has Howland ever liked Dahlia. It's not long before Dahlia and Bacchus have relocated to Victoria's spare room as boarders.
But Dahlia, like the empty coffin, has her own secrets, and bodies start turning up. One's in the town dump, where a fired that had been dying down has flared up again. Another washes up on the beach. And who sent Dahlia a Brazilian tea laced with poisonous evergreen needles?
This is a wonderful little cozy, with the pace building gradually to a fine level of tension. Victoria is smart and mentally tough, and thoroughly believable. West Tisbury may have a murder rate rivaling that of Cabot Cove, Maine in the 1980s and 1990s (as all Angela Lansbury fans will recall), but like Jessica Fletcher and her neighbors, Victoria Trumbull and her neighbors are likely to make it worthwhile.
Recommended.
I borrowed this book from the library.
The cemetery director, also town selectman, Denny Rhodes, gets a seemingly ordinary request from a family no longer living on island to have the coffin of a family member who committed suicide ten years ago disinterred. Now that no one is left on the island, they want to move her to Wisconsin, where they are now living. Not an issue at all--until the coffin is found to be empty except for some bags of perfectly ordinary sand.
Meanwhile, Victoria's neighbor, Howland Atherton, learns that his cousin Dahlia, whom he is not fond of, is coming for an extended visit. She's retired from the Foreign Service, is suffering from cancer, and wants to be treated at the hospital in the town where she grew up. She brings with her her pet toucan, Bacchus--and Bacchus and Howland don't like each other, to say the least. Nor has Howland ever liked Dahlia. It's not long before Dahlia and Bacchus have relocated to Victoria's spare room as boarders.
But Dahlia, like the empty coffin, has her own secrets, and bodies start turning up. One's in the town dump, where a fired that had been dying down has flared up again. Another washes up on the beach. And who sent Dahlia a Brazilian tea laced with poisonous evergreen needles?
This is a wonderful little cozy, with the pace building gradually to a fine level of tension. Victoria is smart and mentally tough, and thoroughly believable. West Tisbury may have a murder rate rivaling that of Cabot Cove, Maine in the 1980s and 1990s (as all Angela Lansbury fans will recall), but like Jessica Fletcher and her neighbors, Victoria Trumbull and her neighbors are likely to make it worthwhile.
Recommended.
I borrowed this book from the library.
February 15, 2018
Clearly these books are growing on me. And this time, the killer snuck up on me, which makes it lots of fun. Just enough hints and clues to make me think it *might* be who I thought it was, while still making me second guess myself.
May 13, 2014
This is an engaging mystery with an unlikely protagonist, delightfully read by Davina Porter.
March 4, 2024
This is a rock solid entry in the Victoria Trumbull series! Ms. Riggs’ books all sail along at a nice clip and the characters are all interesting as well as quite believable. Victoria herself is of course a 92 year old force of nature, and always fun to spend time with.
Here, there’s a snafu in the exhumation of a coffin at the local cemetery, and the consequences of that loom large throughout the book. Riggs just has the ability to keep the yarn moving right along, and the pages turn effortlessly. And to put the cherry on top, there’s a twist as cute as any I’ve read in many a year at the denouement. Thoroughly enjoying the series.
Here, there’s a snafu in the exhumation of a coffin at the local cemetery, and the consequences of that loom large throughout the book. Riggs just has the ability to keep the yarn moving right along, and the pages turn effortlessly. And to put the cherry on top, there’s a twist as cute as any I’ve read in many a year at the denouement. Thoroughly enjoying the series.
July 28, 2013
There's a joke that Cabot Cove, Maine is the murder capital of the USA. Well ... West Tisbury, Massachusetts seems to be giving them a run for their money, with three homicides in a row ... off-season no less!
This story moved S-L-O-W-L-Y, with the first dead body not appearing until after the halfway point. Granted I'm reading the series for the local details, which are fine, but there's so much backstory and chatter among the locals that I began to despair of anyone dying! Second half has all of the "will they catch the killer?" tension, though even that part has some "he did this, and then he did that" style writing. After a lot of suspension-of-disbelief happenings, we learn the identity of the killer in a scene that reads as though the author decided she was tired of writing, so sat down to write the ending once and for all.
As someone with Nantucket roots, I will say that the hoopla regarding the annual inter-island football game was accurate: a big freaking deal it is! Much is made of the fact that Victoria didn't know Dahlia's family as they were "summer people until recently"; if they'd been longtime homeowners, someone like Victoria would've been aware of them, even if they moved in different circles.
A note on the audiobook, Davina Porter's reading of American characters with English accents did grate, even if her delivery of the non-dialogue narrative flowed well.
This story moved S-L-O-W-L-Y, with the first dead body not appearing until after the halfway point. Granted I'm reading the series for the local details, which are fine, but there's so much backstory and chatter among the locals that I began to despair of anyone dying! Second half has all of the "will they catch the killer?" tension, though even that part has some "he did this, and then he did that" style writing. After a lot of suspension-of-disbelief happenings, we learn the identity of the killer in a scene that reads as though the author decided she was tired of writing, so sat down to write the ending once and for all.
As someone with Nantucket roots, I will say that the hoopla regarding the annual inter-island football game was accurate: a big freaking deal it is! Much is made of the fact that Victoria didn't know Dahlia's family as they were "summer people until recently"; if they'd been longtime homeowners, someone like Victoria would've been aware of them, even if they moved in different circles.
A note on the audiobook, Davina Porter's reading of American characters with English accents did grate, even if her delivery of the non-dialogue narrative flowed well.
August 2, 2018
When I read the first book in this series, I really had no desire to read any further even though I love the idea of a 92 year old woman solving crimes...I only hope I could do as well!!! But since we were reading the 4th book for my mystery book club and I like to start at the beginning, I went ahead and read the 2nd and the 4th one (I had to give up on reading the 3rd one before our discussion) and was glad that I stuck with it. Now, having read this third one, I'm planning to continue with the entire series. I really think this was my favorite so far. It takes a bit to finally figure out where this is going but that's normally half the fun of getting there. A coffin needs to be disinterred but can't be located. Then when it is finally found, something unexpected is discovered and then the coffin disappears again. The coffin and its parts seem to travel over quite a bit of the countryside on Martha's Vineyard and then bodies start turning up. I didn't see the ending coming until pretty well towards the end and I have a feeling that some (or at least one) of these characters may make a future appearance in later books in the series.
April 21, 2013
Who wouldn't be enchanted with Victoria Trumbull? She is 92 years old, she is a deputy in the West Tisbury Police Department on Martha's Vineyard, and she is sharp as a tack. Victoria knows just about everyone in town and remembers all of the skeltons in their family closets. In this third in the series, an empty coffin is discovered in the West Tisbury Cemetery and then a series of baffling murders begin to occur in and around town. The strange thing is that all of the victims are retired foreign service officers. Victoria may not be able to get around like she used to, but she's able to figure out what's going on in this little caper. I need to dig up the first two books in this series. A very pleasant read for a rainy afternoon.
June 5, 2016
A rather convoluted tale and not as interesting as I'd hoped given the unusual sleuth, a 92 year old deputy in the Martha's Vineyard police department. Perhaps I would have felt more involved if I had read the previous 2 volumes and was more familiar with the cast of characters. Overall it just felt a bit flat in both story and characters with a mystery that was far from absorbing. I probably won't continue with the series although I do find the titles and cover art appealing. It's weird that Victoria stays 92 across the entire 13 book (so far) series. That was one crime-filled year on the old island.
August 7, 2013
I continue to enjoy listening to this Martha's Vineyard series, with it's collection of engaging characters and pleasantly puzzling plots. This one is almost a locked room mystery, always a hills challenge for a mystery writer.
April 15, 2021
Fun, smart and I now want to visit Martha's Vineyard
March 25, 2023
I have a habit of starting book series in the middle instead of the beginning. This book was a recent addition to my physical TBR shelf, but I'm glad I chose it to read it before some that have been on my TBR shelf for years (I will admit, the title caught my eye).
The MC, Victoria Trumbull, isn't the typical cozy mystery MC. She's 92 years young, a poet, reporter, and a sheriff's deputy. She's graciously hosting the cousin of a friend, who has come to the Vineyard to claim her half of a property. A misplaced casket holding bags of sand instead of a body (which later turns up missing) and a cast of characters who converge on Martha's Vineyard to find what is really hidden in the casket, and the bodies start piling up. Victoria matches wits with the suspects, including the use of multiple quotes from Robert Frost. The murderer was a little surprising as all clues seemed to be pointing toward someone else. I found the final twist at the end to be a delightful surprise.
Frankly, Victoria is my sunset years goal.
I plan to read the entire series.
The MC, Victoria Trumbull, isn't the typical cozy mystery MC. She's 92 years young, a poet, reporter, and a sheriff's deputy. She's graciously hosting the cousin of a friend, who has come to the Vineyard to claim her half of a property. A misplaced casket holding bags of sand instead of a body (which later turns up missing) and a cast of characters who converge on Martha's Vineyard to find what is really hidden in the casket, and the bodies start piling up. Victoria matches wits with the suspects, including the use of multiple quotes from Robert Frost. The murderer was a little surprising as all clues seemed to be pointing toward someone else. I found the final twist at the end to be a delightful surprise.
Frankly, Victoria is my sunset years goal.
I plan to read the entire series.
September 1, 2020
Hard to follow the 6 strangers names that the book was centered around. Wasn't really about anyone living on the island, which the prior books had more of. Plot was actually overly simple and the red herrings I felt were an overreach. To me, it felt like the author "cheated" in leading you astray b/c later she was just like, "Never mind about that other stuff, it wasn't true."
Silly book for a beach read. Prefer the other ones in the series.
Also, as a fan of plants and the reason I got into the series... the Cemetery Yew had next to nothing to do with the story. It was obviously picked as the title for marketing purposes and to keep in theme with the series.
Silly book for a beach read. Prefer the other ones in the series.
Also, as a fan of plants and the reason I got into the series... the Cemetery Yew had next to nothing to do with the story. It was obviously picked as the title for marketing purposes and to keep in theme with the series.
September 8, 2020
A corpse to be exhumed, not there, found old metal coffin gone missing, three people murdered.
Victoria takes in a friend's cousin who is undergoing chemotherapy. Actually she is not sick and it is a ruse. Dahlia and the other men were in the foreign service and amassed 10 Million in uncut gems. They were hidden in the coffin. Dahlia had made some bad investments with the mob and now stands to lose everything if she can't come up with the cash. Victoria was all for giving her a share, but the fence they hired, Emory, cracked Victoria's fire and ice allusion to her hiding place. He found the gems and skipped town.
Victoria takes in a friend's cousin who is undergoing chemotherapy. Actually she is not sick and it is a ruse. Dahlia and the other men were in the foreign service and amassed 10 Million in uncut gems. They were hidden in the coffin. Dahlia had made some bad investments with the mob and now stands to lose everything if she can't come up with the cash. Victoria was all for giving her a share, but the fence they hired, Emory, cracked Victoria's fire and ice allusion to her hiding place. He found the gems and skipped town.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 16, 2021
A competently written cozy mystery, featuring nonagenarian Victoria Trumbull.
In this case, Victoria assists the police chief in discovering who has buried a coffin that does not contain a body and how it was later allowed to be dug up. The cast of characters is large and the suspects many. In the end, Victoria outfoxes the clever criminal.
It is enjoyable to read of a detective who is advanced in years but not in mental deterioration, who admits to needing to sit down more often than she used to but is as sharp as ever.
In this case, Victoria assists the police chief in discovering who has buried a coffin that does not contain a body and how it was later allowed to be dug up. The cast of characters is large and the suspects many. In the end, Victoria outfoxes the clever criminal.
It is enjoyable to read of a detective who is advanced in years but not in mental deterioration, who admits to needing to sit down more often than she used to but is as sharp as ever.
August 13, 2017
If you like Murder She Wrote then this series would be more of the same, with different characters. Thanks goodness Jessica Fletcher was not 92, though. The writing is OK, the plotting is rather loosely done, and I don't think it is a very crafty piece of work. Once again, the title has very little to do with the story. Compare it to the "Darling Dahlias" series by Susan Wittig Albert and it falls short on the plant reference.
June 17, 2021
A pleasant mystery escape to Martha’s Vineyard. I really am enjoying the main character. She’s smart, a bit sassy and has lived a good long life so she understands people. I love how she’s the deputy for the police department. There’s always a bit of nature and some history of the island that makes this book series so authentic. I was actually guessing who did the murder until the very end. I was surprised how it all turned out!
January 15, 2026
3.5 bumped up because it kept me entertained. It's a perfectly fine mystery - the writing is good, the character dynamics are interesting, I liked having a sleuth who was in her 90s. The mystery itself was a little muddled - not many clues beyond suspects getting picked off. The murderer did have the strongest motive, but...there was a strong enough motive for anyone to have done it, so that being the deciding factor was a little unsatisfying. Nice setting.
April 27, 2022
I like Victoria Trumball. It is refreshing to see a character of her age (92) who is treated as a fully capable individual. She may need to sit down, but she certainly has all of her mental faculties. She reminds me of my grandmother. As a Massachusetts native, I also enjoy the Vineyard setting.
September 23, 2024
Started off seeming like it was going to be a good read with entertaining characters but it dragged. I had to force myself to finish it just to see if I was correct in my guess about who the killer was.
May 7, 2017
Cozy Mystery is Cozy. And Confusing if you're starting this series partway thru and don't know any of the characters.
December 14, 2018
I enjoy this series every once in awhile.
November 1, 2019
So, so mystery. Okay audio .
November 3, 2020
Fairly basic and there are a bunch a parallels with Miss Marple, but still the setting is fun and the case was good. Basic formula.
January 4, 2021
Another delightful adventure with Victoria Trumbull on Martha's Vineyard.
February 12, 2021
It’s an entertaining read, but there’s nothing particularly interesting about the plot or the setting. The characters are mostly petty to the point of annoyance.
July 13, 2022
I really enjoy reading her cozies. Especially after meeting her in person.
February 13, 2023
Second in this series. Decent, bit I wouldn't spend a credit.
March 14, 2023
Not my thing but well written.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 64 reviews