A Murder for the Sages by Amy Lillard
Twenty-something advice columnist and amateur sleuth Sissy Yoder loves helping out at her Aunt Bethel’s Sunflower Café in Yoder, Kansas. It connects her to family, to the close-knit community—and to the suspicious events that always seem to bubble beneath small-town life . . .
The unusual death of local herb farmer, Ginger Reed, is the talk of Yoder. Naturally, Sissy is intrigued. The official report classifies Ginger’s demise as an accident, concluding that she ran herself over with a tractor. But Sissy’s cousin, Naomi, a friend and longtime employee of Ginger’s, insists that’s impossible. When she asks for Sissy’s help in unearthing the truth, Sissy’s on the case—accompanied as ever by her loyal Yorkie companion, Duke . . .
The deeper Sissy digs, the longer the list of suspects grows—and none of them are Ginger. Near the top is Ginger’s resentful sister-in-law, Mallory. Next is Naomi’s brother, Lloyd, who’s bitter about the oil derrick presumably pumping black gold from Ginger’s land—land that once belonged to his family. Naomi herself could be a suspect—it’s her tractor, after all. But the investigation stalls when Naomi makes a shocking turnaround in her story. Is she lying? And if so, why? Then a missing dog, a desperate lawyer, and a teenage con artist are added to the mix, and the puzzle becomes hopelessly complicated. If Sissy doesn’t solve it quickly, she’ll be lost in the weeds as a killer reaps a deadly harvest . . .
This year RAGT also dealt with a hotel fire. No one was hurt, but an electrical fire on the third floor required an evacuation, and the hotel and some books suffered water damage. Both the hotel and the local fire departments were amazing!
The Last Magdalene is superbly conceived, and serves both as immersive entertainment and a needed corrective. Ms. Conrad has produced the finest novel of the Biblical Era I have read 