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Poppy Rice Mystery #2
She's Not There
When her vacation on Block Island is interrupted by her discovery of the body of a young murder victim, FBI agent Poppy Rice defies orders by investigating the case, which leads her to discover another body and strange clues that link the two deaths. By the author of Love Her Madly. Reprint.
347 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2003
8 people are currently reading
150 people want to read
About the author
Mary-Ann Tirone Smith
19 books30 followersI was born and raised in Hartford, Connecticut and have lived in Connecticut all my life except for the two years I served as a Peace Corps volunteer on Mt. Cameroon, an active volcano rising nearly 14,000 feet above the equatorial sea. I have a fun family and a labradoodle named Saltalamacchia, also fun. "Salty," my first dog.
My grandparents on my father's side immigrated from the north of Italy, and on my mother's, Quebec. My fondest childhood memories are of sweltering summers blue-crabbing with my French-speaking grandfather from 5 a.m. until 5 p.m., my grandfather wearing a worn three-piece suit and cap, and me, my underpants. When I told my Italian grandfather that I would be going to Cameroon as a Peace Corps volunteer he told me there were very good grapes grown in Africa.
My brother was autistic, a savant, who would not allow singing, laughing, sneezing, electronic sound (including television, radio and anything that produced music), and the flushing of the toilet except when he was asleep and he never seemed to be asleep. He had a library of over two thousand books all on WWII. As his adjutant, I attained a vast pool of knowledge on such things as identifying fighter bombers from their silhouettes and why we dropped the atomic bomb. "To win the war," Tyler told me. "But it didn't work so we dropped another one. Victory at last."
The relationship with my brother was one of three influences on my writing; the second, my father's bedtime poetry and prose following the Our Father and Hail Mary. "My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings. Look upon my works ye mighty and despair!" The third influence was the shelf of classic children's literature my mother kept stocked with such gems as The Swiss Family Robinson, Bambi, Tom the Water-Boy, Silver Pennies, King Arthur and the Round Table, The Child's Odyssey. Somehow, The Bedside Esquire (1936) found its way to the shelf and I read the extraordinary short fiction within, including Hemingway's "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," Gallico's Keeping "Cool in Conneaut," Salinger's "For "Esmé with Love and Squalor," Hecht's "Snowfall in Childhood," and my favorite, "Latins Make Lousy Lovers," by Anonymous who turned out to be Helen Lawrenson, the only woman with a piece in the collection. (Sheesh.) Also in the collection was an excerpt from the novel, Christ in Concrete, by Pietro Di Donato, which so bowled me over that I decided then and there that I would be a writer, too, just like all the writers who wrote fiction for Esquire Magazine in 1936.
After Peace Corps service, I taught, worked as a librarian and got my first freelance writing job with Reader's Digest. The Digest editor assigned me sports and games for How to Do Just about Anything, a book which sold 50 million copies world-wide. Reader's Digest made a vast fortune on that book alone, while the writers earned $25 to $75 dollars per article. I learned economy of language writing such pieces as "How to Play Tennis" in fifty words.
In 2010, I was awarded the Diana Bennett Fellowship at the Black Mountain Institute at UNLV, where I wrote my most recent novel, The Honoured Guest: Anne Alger Craven, Witness to Sumter, in Her Words.
My work has been reprinted in several foreign languages. I have taught fiction and memoir writing at many venues including the Mark Twain House in Hartford, CT, and on the Aran Islands through the University of Ireland, Galway, and online via this website.
I spend time in Fall River, MA, where I took the tour of the Lizzie Borden house. By the time the tour had ended, I knew who killed Lizzie's parents and it surely wasn't Lizzie. The competition, however, is stiff. Since I started writing this novel, another novel with an entirely different take on the crime was published. And there is a film presently in the works, again, with another take altogether. I'll keep up my work on my own version, and I'm convinced, the real one.
Right now: On Sunday afternoon, April 15, 2018, I will p
My grandparents on my father's side immigrated from the north of Italy, and on my mother's, Quebec. My fondest childhood memories are of sweltering summers blue-crabbing with my French-speaking grandfather from 5 a.m. until 5 p.m., my grandfather wearing a worn three-piece suit and cap, and me, my underpants. When I told my Italian grandfather that I would be going to Cameroon as a Peace Corps volunteer he told me there were very good grapes grown in Africa.
My brother was autistic, a savant, who would not allow singing, laughing, sneezing, electronic sound (including television, radio and anything that produced music), and the flushing of the toilet except when he was asleep and he never seemed to be asleep. He had a library of over two thousand books all on WWII. As his adjutant, I attained a vast pool of knowledge on such things as identifying fighter bombers from their silhouettes and why we dropped the atomic bomb. "To win the war," Tyler told me. "But it didn't work so we dropped another one. Victory at last."
The relationship with my brother was one of three influences on my writing; the second, my father's bedtime poetry and prose following the Our Father and Hail Mary. "My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings. Look upon my works ye mighty and despair!" The third influence was the shelf of classic children's literature my mother kept stocked with such gems as The Swiss Family Robinson, Bambi, Tom the Water-Boy, Silver Pennies, King Arthur and the Round Table, The Child's Odyssey. Somehow, The Bedside Esquire (1936) found its way to the shelf and I read the extraordinary short fiction within, including Hemingway's "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," Gallico's Keeping "Cool in Conneaut," Salinger's "For "Esmé with Love and Squalor," Hecht's "Snowfall in Childhood," and my favorite, "Latins Make Lousy Lovers," by Anonymous who turned out to be Helen Lawrenson, the only woman with a piece in the collection. (Sheesh.) Also in the collection was an excerpt from the novel, Christ in Concrete, by Pietro Di Donato, which so bowled me over that I decided then and there that I would be a writer, too, just like all the writers who wrote fiction for Esquire Magazine in 1936.
After Peace Corps service, I taught, worked as a librarian and got my first freelance writing job with Reader's Digest. The Digest editor assigned me sports and games for How to Do Just about Anything, a book which sold 50 million copies world-wide. Reader's Digest made a vast fortune on that book alone, while the writers earned $25 to $75 dollars per article. I learned economy of language writing such pieces as "How to Play Tennis" in fifty words.
In 2010, I was awarded the Diana Bennett Fellowship at the Black Mountain Institute at UNLV, where I wrote my most recent novel, The Honoured Guest: Anne Alger Craven, Witness to Sumter, in Her Words.
My work has been reprinted in several foreign languages. I have taught fiction and memoir writing at many venues including the Mark Twain House in Hartford, CT, and on the Aran Islands through the University of Ireland, Galway, and online via this website.
I spend time in Fall River, MA, where I took the tour of the Lizzie Borden house. By the time the tour had ended, I knew who killed Lizzie's parents and it surely wasn't Lizzie. The competition, however, is stiff. Since I started writing this novel, another novel with an entirely different take on the crime was published. And there is a film presently in the works, again, with another take altogether. I'll keep up my work on my own version, and I'm convinced, the real one.
Right now: On Sunday afternoon, April 15, 2018, I will p
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews
February 8, 2025
Read the beginning, read the end. It all seemed pretty stupid.
April 30, 2018
Really enjoyed the story. It was a little choppy to read and sometime you would have to re-read to figure out who was speaking. It was really interesting to have a unique murder and reason. If you like murder mysteries, you will really enjoy this book.
July 28, 2017
I found this book hard to get into, mainly because I didn't find the characters interesting enough for me to care about (for the most part- I found the girls at the camp likeable and well written, and the village people enraged me). The conversations NEVER ENDED. I was almost ready to yell 'just get to the point already!'. However, the ending made me like it more. At about page 300, it really picked up and I found it both creative and thrilling. The ending enraged me, but in the write way- I was pissed at the characters and wanted them to suffer, not in the this is terribly written way.
One thing that irritated the hell out of me was that that's not how autism works. At all.
One thing that irritated the hell out of me was that that's not how autism works. At all.
November 3, 2025
When I started this book I couldn’t last… a hard read at first… Nothing caught me off.
The characters were just pieces not people
So I skimmed through to see if anything caught
Then whoosh a dead girl
And I wondered how she died… I mean I stopped reading few chapters away… then I forced myself to read this book and it was SOOOO WORTH IT. Yh I still skipped parts but it was memorable.
TL/DR: It’s an underrated, quietly dark crime novel. Not groundbreaking, but it has a distinct voice and purpose.
It’s one of those books that’s more memorable for what it’s about than how it’s written.
September 27, 2018
DNF this book started off alright. Then it seemed like it a dragged on. The characters names didn’t help in me holding any interest. I read a review that said it picks up at 300 pages. That’s too long for me to have to wait to remain interested.
September 13, 2017
Good murder mystery.
August 4, 2019
First read from this author. Really like the Poppy Rice character--what a great job she has! Portions of this were bizarre but it did keep me guessing. An enjoyable quick read.
March 10, 2020
2/2 of Poppy Rice's adventures.
Really liked these books, wish there had been more of them written.
Really liked these books, wish there had been more of them written.
June 28, 2020
Block Island is the backdrop. Story moved along and the method of murder was interesting!
January 4, 2021
Very good. Highly suspensful.
January 21, 2022
I liked this book. I like the way Poppy thinks.
December 15, 2012
I got this book in a bag from a friend and dug it out because I was looking for a good murder mystery. I was not too disappointed. The characters were memorable in their down to earth way, but the relationship between Poppy Rice and Joe was awkward. I guess I should have read the previous book to learn more about them. The murder side of things was interesting - the killer preyed on teen girls who were sent to a decrepit summer camp to lose weight. The author used the term FAT throughout the book and the only way the girls would be cooperative was to feed them. Even the victims were lured to their death by a picnic. This over use of the overweight American girls left a bad taste in my mouth....pun intended
The method of death was a new one for me - but I won't spoil it as the cause doesn't get revealed until the very end. In fact, the final scene is pretty much what saved the book from a lower star rating for me.
The method of death was a new one for me - but I won't spoil it as the cause doesn't get revealed until the very end. In fact, the final scene is pretty much what saved the book from a lower star rating for me.
October 5, 2012
FBI agent Poppy Rice is starting day three of her mid-July vacation on Block Island, located off the Rhode Island coast. Mind you, Poppy was more or less forced to take this time off, but after two days of fishing, kayaking, biking, hiking, bodysurfing and swimming, she's looking forward to seeing what Joe has in mind for this day. If you read the first novel, you know that Joe Barnow is a chief field advisor for the ATF and that although Poppy likes him, it's not like she wants to committed relationship. On this third morning, Joe has flown his Cessna to the mainland to do a quick errand for a local musician, so Poppy's taking advantage of the free time to ride her bike over to a local woman's house to buy some souvenir art work...
Read my review here: http://mostlyfiction.com/sleuths/tiro...
Read my review here: http://mostlyfiction.com/sleuths/tiro...
July 19, 2010
I normally don't read mysteries, but after having loved Mary-Ann Tirone Smith's Girls of Tender Age, I'm slowly making my way through her other novels. I've read the two previous books Poppy Rice appeared in (An American Killing and Love Her Madly, of which only the latter was an official "Poppy Rice Mystery") and this is my least favorite of the three. I think Tirone Smith is a masterful writer but I prefer her memoir and her historical novels to the mysteries, which seem to suffer from a lack of character development and far-fetched plot points. I plan to read the final Poppy Rice book if I get my hands on it (She Smiled Sweetly), but only for the sake of completion.
February 25, 2012
This is the first book I have read by Mary-Ann Tirone Smith, and it was a fine introduction for me to her works.
On an island there is a "Fat-farm" for young girls and as more dead bodies occurs, there is a ban on leaving the island, so actually we here deal with the classic murder in a closed room.
The book os well written amd has very few loose ends.
I have read numerous crime stories through the years, but I have never been tempted to loo at the last pages to see who did it.
But I always guess.
In this case my guess was totally wrong.
I plan to read more books about FBI-agent Poppy Rice in the future.
On an island there is a "Fat-farm" for young girls and as more dead bodies occurs, there is a ban on leaving the island, so actually we here deal with the classic murder in a closed room.
The book os well written amd has very few loose ends.
I have read numerous crime stories through the years, but I have never been tempted to loo at the last pages to see who did it.
But I always guess.
In this case my guess was totally wrong.
I plan to read more books about FBI-agent Poppy Rice in the future.
September 12, 2010
I thought this was the strongest of the three Poppy Rice mysteries. The secondary characters were fleshed out in a more believable way than the first two - it felt like Tirone Smith was just hitting her stride. I'm sorry this seems to be the last book in the series.
July 4, 2012
I'm not usually able to get into this type of book. It was very good and very unpredictable. The main character isn't full of herself which usually stops me from reading any kind of female detective book.
July 18, 2015
At first I was a bit skeptical, I thought I thought this book will never get a hold of me, but it did.. However I think the first part is kind of a disconnect. But the story got better as it went on, but it did take me a few good pages to get me to be REALLY interested to get to the end...
April 27, 2007
Boilerplate female mysteries with silly conceits like how this FBI agent gets to run around the US picking her cases that all happen to fall in her lap.
September 24, 2007
The further I go into the Poppy Rice series, the less I like her. I'm not sure why this is, but I probably won't buy anymore of the series.
March 27, 2009
creepy as hell
June 19, 2012
This book was only okay. It was about an FBI agent on vacation who stumbles on a murder.
August 12, 2012
Great descriptions of the island, and a good story that had me turning the pages, however I did feel like the character development was lacking just a bit, which hurt the ending a bit.
March 28, 2013
By-the-numbers whodunit benefits from a nice sense of place, but rote and clumsy exposition repeatedly stalls the narrative. The denouement especially suffers.
August 30, 2013
Now I want to read the other Poppy Ruce novels. This was a great read. A good old fashioned murder mystery.
February 2, 2016
An OK story.
January 27, 2016
1st time I have read this author - enjoyed it.
July 27, 2016
Found this on the shelf in a vacation rental. Not bad, but wouldn't make my typical reading list. The girls at the "fat camp" are so stereotyped it was difficult to read at times.
September 10, 2016
good story. the author has a colorful imagination to her characters and places. good imagery. only thing I'd change is the G-D word in both books. on to the next...
September 11, 2016
love these books. sad the series ended. sweet ending though. ending kind of predictable, unlike the other 2 in the series. oh well. on to the next book!
Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews