Murder She Wrote: Skating on Thin Ice-Jessica Fletcher and Donald Bain

Murder She Wrote: Skating on Thin Ice
Jessica Fletcher and Donald Bain
Obsidian, Apr 5 2011, $22.95
ISBN: 9780451232342

In Cabot Cove, Maine, Olympic Gold medalist Bruce Devlin trains promising figure skating pair Christine Allen and Russian Alexei Olshansky. Christine does not like either male as her coach is a demanding perfectionist who rejects anything less than the best; her pompous partner believes he is Russia’s gift to the American female population. Still at the Cabot Cove Ice Arena she endures both as they are her platform to success in skating pair competition.

However, accidents begin to occur with a frequency that makes local Dr. Seth Hazlitt feel they are deliberate. Soon afterward Alexei is murdered and another skater Jeremy is hammered into a coma. Sheriff Mort Metzger and novelist Jessica Fletcher investigate Skating on Thin Ice.

After the mostly recent road tour (see A Slaying in Savannah, Madison Avenue Shoot, Queen Jewels and Nashville Noir), Jessica returns home to Cabot Cove where she investigates the Alexei homicide and related felonies. Her being back in Maine is a two edged sword as that locale has been the prime place for the myriad of books and the TV series, but also brings a deja vu feel to the plot. Still this is an engaging whodunit in which readers will never look at a Zamboni in the same way.

Harriet Klausner