Zapped

by C.J. Verburg

Who’s out to kill Ashley Dillon? Nobody’s supposed to know she’s in Las Vegas except her parents and Haggis Mack, the rock-bagpiper she’s divorcing. But threats from a cell-phone stalker, and nearly drowning in the Bellagio pool, send Ashley fleeing home to Cape Cod. Where better to turn 21 than at the posh waterfront party her mom, inventor Pam Nash, is throwing to launch Zappa, her revolutionary “Taser for pacifists”?

Pam appeals to her fellow genius Edgar How the hell do I add a birthday party to a weapon demonstration? Edgar, famous for his sinister little black-and-white storybooks, refers her to local soup-chef Lydia Vivaldi and Wampanoag pastry artist Mudge Miles. Champagne and cake, military brass and venture capitalists—Ashley’s thrilled, Zappa’s a hit, and Pam is hugely relieved . . . until Lydia spots a partygoer dead in the water. Did Ashley’s stalker drown the wrong target? Can the police find out in time to stop another attack? As ripples of violence widen, Edgar Rowdey reluctantly changes from guest of honor to sleuth.

289 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 12, 2018

About the author

San Francisco writer Carol (CJ) Verburg is an award-winning playwright, theater director, and author of best-selling books, including the international literature collections Ourselves Among Others and Making Contact.

Carol started her literary career before age one, telling stories to a rapt audience of stuffed animals. In her early teens she wrote her first novel and won her first playwriting award. At Mount Holyoke College she wrote the book and lyrics for the first rock musical, We Could Save the World. Since then she's worked as a cocktail waitress, newspaper proofreader, part-time boat-builder, and (for decades) an in-house and freelance trade and textbook editor and author in Boston and San Francisco.

Her Cory Goodwin mystery series includes Silent Night Violent Night, an hommage to the noir side of publishing, and Another Number for the Road, the first multimedia literary rock-&-roll novel.

For many years she ran theater companies on Cape Cod and lived up the road from the artist and author Edward Gorey. They became close friends and frequent collaborators, a symbiosis which inspired her lavishly illustrated 2024 artist's biography The Theatrical Adventures of Edward Gorey: Rare Drawings, Scripts, and Stories, as well as her short multimedia ebook Edward Gorey On Stage, and her Edgar Rowdey Cape Cod mystery series: Croaked, Zapped, and Shafted, or The Toastrack Enigma (plus a couple of stories).

Reviews

[Jenni Buhr · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this is where I declare an interest by saying C.J. Verburg was a classmate of mine, and we have known each other for decades, but lost touch for several of those decades. A visit to the Edward Gorey House Museum on Cape Cod presented me with her familiar name on book covers, and Facebook gave us the chance to reconnect in recent years. I very much enjoyed Croaked, the previous Edgar Rowdey/Lydia Vivaldi mystery, and I loved Zapped, the second volume in the series. Edgar is a slightly grumpy writer/artist based on the very real, but sadly late, genius author/illustrator Edward Gorey and Lydia is a young woman searching for a place in the world whose genius for cooking soups lands her a job at a local café populated with slightly mad and always amusing characters among both staff and customers. The characters introduced in Croaked are now firmly established as my friends in Zapped. Setting the series on Cape Cod is ideal for setting up stories that include wealthy summer people, the artist community, the in-comers looking for a quiet life, and the locals trying to eke out a living, including a Wampanoag teen who offers a glimpse of the strains that go back to the 17th century settlement of coastal Massachusetts. The plotting is clever in the manner of the gentle mysteries of the mid-20th century golden age of mysteries that mixed good writing with humour and a dab of irony. In Zapped, a Cape resident famed as an inventor for her Stick-Up Clock, the Stifler which shuts off annoying car alarms, the Squelcher cell-phone jammer, and the Dog-On alarm system that mimics a pack of Rottweilers, is about to debut the Zappa, a safe taser, that will revolutionise law enforcement and personal safety when released to the market. The debut party becomes enmeshed with the 21st birthday of her affluenzed daughter who dreams of Hollywood and will be gaining control of her trust fund and shedding her husband, a member of rock bagpipe band Haggis Addiction. Zapped had me hooked right from the opening chapter, poolside at the Bellagio Resort in Las Vegas. Now that the village of Quansett is familiar territory, and its inhabitants are old friends I want to have a chance to revisit soon to see how things are getting on in Lydia's love life, and whether the bookstore recently bought by a retired New England Patriots football legend is getting on, and if Lydia's Wampanoag catering partner will be recognised soon as a pastry baker of brilliance.

[C.J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

As the author, all I can say is that I really enjoyed writing ZAPPED and revisiting my favorite places on Cape Cod. If you enjoyed the first book in this series, CROAKED: An Edgar Rowdey Cape Cod Mystery, don't miss ZAPPED, which follows Quansett's reclusive author-artist-sleuth and his eccentric neighbors through threats that erupt when local inventor Pam Nash introduces her new Zappa, a "Taser for pacifists." I'm adding my own rating here to balance out a troll who decided to sabotage my books on Goodreads without reading them (even some out-of-print textbooks) by giving them one-star ratings -- I don't know why, but Goodreads says it's against their policy to ask or question.

[Candy Wood]

More quirky Cape Cod goings-on make this second Edgar Rowdey mystery fun. The opening in Las Vegas had me worried with its adjective-laden (“tanned and blonded by the sun”?) account of a handsome, shallow-seeming couple, but things quickly get better. Back on the Cape, Lydia Vivaldi keeps learning in her new roles of caterer and unpaid investigator. Though we see the action through the perspective of several different characters, we never have direct access to Edgar’s thoughts, adding to his mystique. Mystery, action, and humor all produce a good read.

[Ann S. Lokey]

What Happened to the Cat?

Interesting characters who hold your attention throughout this intriguing mystery set in summertime Cape Cod. I look forward to another by this author.