Mad Season

Ruth Willmarth #1

by Nancy Means Wright

It's a hard spring for Ruth Willmarth. The mud lies deep on her Vermont farm, and a rash of barn burnings is sweeping the region. Her 10-year-old son disappears, and her elderly neighbors are murdered. Along with the demands of her farm, Ruth feels the pressure bearing down on her--and knows she must act to save her son and catch a killer.

Genres: Mystery, Cozy Mystery

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

I'm the author of 18 books of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, including 5 mystery novels from St. Martin's Press, 2 historical novels: Midnight Fires: a Mystery with Mary Wollstonecraft ('10)and the Nightmare ('11)from Perseverance Press.For those who don't know her, Wollstonecraft is the brilliant but rebellious and conflicted 18th century author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman,and mother of Mary Shelley (think Frankenstein).
I've also published 2 mysteries for kids. The Pea Soup Poisonings, based on my own 4 kids'childhood shenanigans, won the '06 Agatha Award for Best Children's/YA Novel,and The Great Circus Train Robbery was a finalist. My latest mystery is Broken Strings, a spin-off from my St. Martin's Press novels with a puppeteer sleuth, and a novel, Walking up into the Wild for "tweens" (ages 10-14, set in 18th-century Vermont just before the end of the American Revolution. It's both suspenseful and romantic and based on family history. Not a mystery.
I've published poems and short fiction for Redbook, Seventeen, American Literary Review,Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, and many literary journals and anthologies (Beacon Press, Ashland Poetry Press, Univ of Illinois Press, et al.).
A longtime actress & director,I'm a former Bread Loaf Scholar and Scholar for the Vermont Humanities Council. I live with my spouse and 2 Maine Coon cats in bucolic Middlebury, Vermont. "Becoming Mary Wollstonecraft" Facebook page.

Reviews

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting story. Multiple points of view, Mom, victims, friend, 12 year old boy. Some gems with the way a mom thinks and life on a farm. Odd phrasing, sometimes being disjointed, almost stream of consciouness. The last thirty pages really dragged.