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Cordelia Morgan Mystery #1
Woman Who Knew Too Much
First in the Cordelia Morgan Mystery series
In the New Mexico "outback," someone is experimenting with a new designer drug developed to give fellows a little boost, if some of its nasty side effects can be removed. Enter Cordelia Morgan, on a routine assignment that turns out to be anything but. Jet Butler has lived on an isolated mesa for more than twenty years ever since her feminist bestseller indirectly caused the deaths of eighty-three women and children living in a commune during an FBI-bungled siege. Now her best friend and next-door neighbor, Kit, is the prime suspect in the murder of a local recluse, a man Jet ranks as the single most unlikeable human being she's ever met. Enter Cord Morgan. She's a hit artist for The Company, an international "contracting" firm. Morgan is a few years past the ten-year limit prescribed for her line of work. The Company, sensing the beginning of a crack or two, gives her an easy vacation assignment in rural New Mexico. But when she meets up with Jet Butler, her facade really begins to crack and Cordelia Morgan finds herself on the run.
In the New Mexico "outback," someone is experimenting with a new designer drug developed to give fellows a little boost, if some of its nasty side effects can be removed. Enter Cordelia Morgan, on a routine assignment that turns out to be anything but. Jet Butler has lived on an isolated mesa for more than twenty years ever since her feminist bestseller indirectly caused the deaths of eighty-three women and children living in a commune during an FBI-bungled siege. Now her best friend and next-door neighbor, Kit, is the prime suspect in the murder of a local recluse, a man Jet ranks as the single most unlikeable human being she's ever met. Enter Cord Morgan. She's a hit artist for The Company, an international "contracting" firm. Morgan is a few years past the ten-year limit prescribed for her line of work. The Company, sensing the beginning of a crack or two, gives her an easy vacation assignment in rural New Mexico. But when she meets up with Jet Butler, her facade really begins to crack and Cordelia Morgan finds herself on the run.
250 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 1998
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24 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 2, 2013
The Woman Who Knew Too Much by B. (Bett) Reece Johnson is the first of three Cordelia Morgan mysteries, the last of which appeared ten years ago. Some readers may have a difficulty with the structure of this novel because the Cordelia Morgan is not the protagonist or is at best a co-protagonist with Jet Butler, the character around whom the story unfolds.
Butler is hiding out in Northern New Mexico under an assumed name after an unfortunate event twenty years in her past involving the deaths of innocent women and children. She returns home from teaching a college course in California to witness the death of a neighbor––another refugee from academia who is hiding out from his own demons.
Butler is soon drawn into a whirlwind that threatens her quiet exile. Into the storm steps Cordelia Morgan disguised as the dead professor’s former student, but in truth weighted down with her own hidden agenda—preservation of a water rights agreement whose opponents were led by Butler’s tenant neighbor.
Butler and Morgan couldn’t be more different. Butler is consumed by doubt and fear as she tries to make sense of the people and the events that have overtaken her. Morgan on the other hand is a cool customer confident in her extra ordinary abilities yet not sure how to draw the line between her past and her future. The result is a tale of rising tension as the two women seek to unravel the truth of what happened to the dead academic and make sense out of their own checkered pasts.
One aspect of Johnson’s writing that makes The Woman Who Knew Too Much stand out in addition to the characters and the story itself is Cordelia Morgan’s internal dialogue presented in short chapters in between those written from Jet Butler’s point of view. Morgan is as unique a character as you’ll ever want to meet––smart, beautiful and possessing a sixth sense. She’s almost a super hero––out of touch with the vagaries of daily life that drag down people like Jet Butler.
I might quarrel with Johnson over how she defines two large external forces––the federal government which failed to investigate a Waco-like siege that killed innocent women and children and The Company––a seemingly all-powerful International business organization for whom Morgan has worked for the past ten plus years. But I’ve used that literary devise myself (in my first novel, The Expendable Man). There is a danger of making those forces so powerful defeating them lacks credibility.
There were also a few particulars that I didn’t buy, including a watch dog that didn’t bark at strangers, but Johnson is a wordsmith of the first order. “We chart our path in a different book,” she writes on Page 204, “a sordid unsacred text––a guide to our accidental universe that brooks no god and never did and never will, so that the human beast manufactures its own seed, sows its miracles and reaps such reward or punishment as befits the season. We are creatures eternally damned, sentenced at birth to everlasting freedom.”
Strange, but true coda: I picked this book off a shelf of free books in Elkridge, Maryland and decided to read it when I noticed it was a former library book from the Southern Saratoga Library system in upstate New York near where I grew up and now spend my summers. I’d love to solve the mystery of how this copy came to be on that shelf.
Butler is hiding out in Northern New Mexico under an assumed name after an unfortunate event twenty years in her past involving the deaths of innocent women and children. She returns home from teaching a college course in California to witness the death of a neighbor––another refugee from academia who is hiding out from his own demons.
Butler is soon drawn into a whirlwind that threatens her quiet exile. Into the storm steps Cordelia Morgan disguised as the dead professor’s former student, but in truth weighted down with her own hidden agenda—preservation of a water rights agreement whose opponents were led by Butler’s tenant neighbor.
Butler and Morgan couldn’t be more different. Butler is consumed by doubt and fear as she tries to make sense of the people and the events that have overtaken her. Morgan on the other hand is a cool customer confident in her extra ordinary abilities yet not sure how to draw the line between her past and her future. The result is a tale of rising tension as the two women seek to unravel the truth of what happened to the dead academic and make sense out of their own checkered pasts.
One aspect of Johnson’s writing that makes The Woman Who Knew Too Much stand out in addition to the characters and the story itself is Cordelia Morgan’s internal dialogue presented in short chapters in between those written from Jet Butler’s point of view. Morgan is as unique a character as you’ll ever want to meet––smart, beautiful and possessing a sixth sense. She’s almost a super hero––out of touch with the vagaries of daily life that drag down people like Jet Butler.
I might quarrel with Johnson over how she defines two large external forces––the federal government which failed to investigate a Waco-like siege that killed innocent women and children and The Company––a seemingly all-powerful International business organization for whom Morgan has worked for the past ten plus years. But I’ve used that literary devise myself (in my first novel, The Expendable Man). There is a danger of making those forces so powerful defeating them lacks credibility.
There were also a few particulars that I didn’t buy, including a watch dog that didn’t bark at strangers, but Johnson is a wordsmith of the first order. “We chart our path in a different book,” she writes on Page 204, “a sordid unsacred text––a guide to our accidental universe that brooks no god and never did and never will, so that the human beast manufactures its own seed, sows its miracles and reaps such reward or punishment as befits the season. We are creatures eternally damned, sentenced at birth to everlasting freedom.”
Strange, but true coda: I picked this book off a shelf of free books in Elkridge, Maryland and decided to read it when I noticed it was a former library book from the Southern Saratoga Library system in upstate New York near where I grew up and now spend my summers. I’d love to solve the mystery of how this copy came to be on that shelf.
July 15, 2010
I picked this book up at the condo we were cleaning and found it an awesome read. Cordelia Morgan is a great character and the star of three novels by Brett Reece Johnson.
February 28, 2013
Slightly weird, but not too bad. Interesting that this is touted as a Cordelia Morgan mystery yet the book is not written from her point of view...that threw me for a while...
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews