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Hannah Garvey Mystery #5
Halfway to Half Way
Halfway to happily ever after...probably.
Hannah Garvey, the resident manager of Valhalla Springs, an exclusive retirement community, thought she had this love thing all sewn up. She's engaged to David Hendrickson, the hunky Kinderhook County sheriff, and thinks the future looks pretty rosy--until one of Sanity, Missouri's most esteemed citizens becomes the county's latest homicide victim.
Meanwhile, Delbert Bisbee and his gang of senior gumshoes are driving Hannah nuts, doling out advice, delving into an old missing-persons case and digging dirt where they don't belong. Literally. And no matter what they unearth, there's just no halfway about it...life has a funny way of happening when you're making other plans.
"A crowd-pleasing, lightweight whodunit filled with unabashedly wacky characters...a comic romance mystery that gives equal weight to all three elements and caps it with an ending that doesn't disappoint."  --"Publishers Weekly" on "Once a Thief"
Hannah Garvey, the resident manager of Valhalla Springs, an exclusive retirement community, thought she had this love thing all sewn up. She's engaged to David Hendrickson, the hunky Kinderhook County sheriff, and thinks the future looks pretty rosy--until one of Sanity, Missouri's most esteemed citizens becomes the county's latest homicide victim.
Meanwhile, Delbert Bisbee and his gang of senior gumshoes are driving Hannah nuts, doling out advice, delving into an old missing-persons case and digging dirt where they don't belong. Literally. And no matter what they unearth, there's just no halfway about it...life has a funny way of happening when you're making other plans.
"A crowd-pleasing, lightweight whodunit filled with unabashedly wacky characters...a comic romance mystery that gives equal weight to all three elements and caps it with an ending that doesn't disappoint."  --"Publishers Weekly" on "Once a Thief"
ebook
First published May 1, 2007
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About the author
Suzann Ledbetter
27 books18 followersFifteen or twenty minutes of intense Website surfing suggests that biographical segments are usually devoted to former vocations, titles published and awards won. The latter two categories seem redundant to additional electronic buttonry labeled Book List, to homepages advertising current tomes, and mentions elsewhere of honors bestowed, humbly received and treasured in perpetuity.
As for the former, having not been gainfully employed in return for weekly paychecks since 1976, I assume a brief, intervening stint as a water-filled shoe insole salesperson doesn't rank right up there with the legions of doctors-, lawyers-, educators-, captains of industry-, or CIA operatives-turned-scribes.
Second to vocational pursuits are avocations, which for others range from gardening, needle-arts, molecular biology and NASCAR fanatacism to scuba-diving, astronomy, world travel, and running for miles absent a pack of rabid wolves snapping at one's heels.
The fiction writer in me yearns to invent hobbies of that ilk, as one would attribute to a novel's protagonist to make him or her interesting. The nonfiction side advises the truth, or an interpretation of it based on available research. My inner humorist struggles to keep a straight face.
Henry David Thoreau disparaged the unexamined life as unworthy of sustained respiration. Valid or not, I'll give it a whirl . . ..
When I'm not writing or speaking about writing, I'm either reading, or asleep. I adore my husband and most of the time, our children. Our basic 3bd./2 ba. home is shared with two greyhounds, two fat, hirsute cats and thousands of books--the majority shelved and probably having a scoliotic effect on the floor joists and foundation.
At work or during recess, I drink too much coffee, alternating with room-temperature Cokes slugged straight from the bottles. Caffeine, for me, is its own food group and when focused on what I'm writing, suffices for the chewable variety I'm too distracted or lazy to prepare. Habitual meal-skipping isn't recommended, but in theory, should be a literal lean cuisine. Alas, it is not.
Finishing a book, fiction or non-, induces a compulsion to rearrange the furniture. Or move. Why, I'll leave to mental health professionals. I suspect it seems easier to Dumpster the crap accumulated over the longish haul and transport items dear to my heart somewhere new and unsullied, than to clean what months of neglect hath wrought.
All in all, I suppose sedate is a nice term for this life as lived and breathed. From an exterior perspective, boring might be more appropos. An observer couldn't comprehend any better than I can explain what it is to ply a keyboard and metamorphose into whomever I want--real or imagined--residing wherever I so desire, in whatever era I choose. For richer, for poorer, for better, worse and downright tragic, until deadlines do us part.
If life and a livelihood get any better than that, I'm not aware of it. Nor, upon fleet examination, would I trade a minute of mine for someone else's better paid, cooler, infinitely more exciting and nutritious one.
In many respects, being a writer is a job, like any other. Except it isn't what I do. It's who I am.
As for the former, having not been gainfully employed in return for weekly paychecks since 1976, I assume a brief, intervening stint as a water-filled shoe insole salesperson doesn't rank right up there with the legions of doctors-, lawyers-, educators-, captains of industry-, or CIA operatives-turned-scribes.
Second to vocational pursuits are avocations, which for others range from gardening, needle-arts, molecular biology and NASCAR fanatacism to scuba-diving, astronomy, world travel, and running for miles absent a pack of rabid wolves snapping at one's heels.
The fiction writer in me yearns to invent hobbies of that ilk, as one would attribute to a novel's protagonist to make him or her interesting. The nonfiction side advises the truth, or an interpretation of it based on available research. My inner humorist struggles to keep a straight face.
Henry David Thoreau disparaged the unexamined life as unworthy of sustained respiration. Valid or not, I'll give it a whirl . . ..
When I'm not writing or speaking about writing, I'm either reading, or asleep. I adore my husband and most of the time, our children. Our basic 3bd./2 ba. home is shared with two greyhounds, two fat, hirsute cats and thousands of books--the majority shelved and probably having a scoliotic effect on the floor joists and foundation.
At work or during recess, I drink too much coffee, alternating with room-temperature Cokes slugged straight from the bottles. Caffeine, for me, is its own food group and when focused on what I'm writing, suffices for the chewable variety I'm too distracted or lazy to prepare. Habitual meal-skipping isn't recommended, but in theory, should be a literal lean cuisine. Alas, it is not.
Finishing a book, fiction or non-, induces a compulsion to rearrange the furniture. Or move. Why, I'll leave to mental health professionals. I suspect it seems easier to Dumpster the crap accumulated over the longish haul and transport items dear to my heart somewhere new and unsullied, than to clean what months of neglect hath wrought.
All in all, I suppose sedate is a nice term for this life as lived and breathed. From an exterior perspective, boring might be more appropos. An observer couldn't comprehend any better than I can explain what it is to ply a keyboard and metamorphose into whomever I want--real or imagined--residing wherever I so desire, in whatever era I choose. For richer, for poorer, for better, worse and downright tragic, until deadlines do us part.
If life and a livelihood get any better than that, I'm not aware of it. Nor, upon fleet examination, would I trade a minute of mine for someone else's better paid, cooler, infinitely more exciting and nutritious one.
In many respects, being a writer is a job, like any other. Except it isn't what I do. It's who I am.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
June 20, 2018
David and Hannah are more than ready to get married, but can't figure out such basic problems as where they'll live afterward. And if David doesn't win his race for the sheriff's office he currently occupies, he may have to leave the county. If that isn't enough to worry about, the widow of the former sheriff is brutally murdered, and her daughter is one of the leading suspects. The one relief, to Hannah, is that the group of elderly people who live in the retirement village she runs seem to be concentrating on a cold case--the decades-ago disappearance of a local man--rather than the current murder.
November 12, 2007
I just love this comical cozy mystery series. A lively retirement community and their new resident manager Hannah solve crimes in zany and adorable fashion.
February 17, 2017
I loved this series. Sad it had to end.
February 21, 2016
I love this whole series. It reminds me a little of the Stephanie Plum books in that the characters are fun and quirky.
June 8, 2017
last in the series, although with the exception of the f-bombs it would be considered a cozy mystery.
July 4, 2016
Halfway to Half Way - Suzann Ledbetter
Valhalla Springs, Book 5; Cozy Mystery; 6/10
Valhalla Springs, Book 5; Cozy Mystery; 6/10
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews