Vengeance Is Mine: A Chautauqua Murder Mystery - Paperback

by Deb Pines (Author)

Vengeance is Mine is the fifth book in Deb Pines' traditional whodunit Chautauqua Mysteries featuring the wise and witty reporter sleuth of a certain age Mimi Goldman.

"An Agatha Christie for the text-message age," IndieReader calls the series.

It's the Fourth of July in 2017 when this mystery starts with a bang. Maureen Donahue, a Black Lives Matter filmmaker and speaker at the historic Chautauqua Institution, is killed at a raucous holiday concert -- amid the orchestra's roar and audience's popping paper bags, to simulate cannon fire at the end of Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture."

A stalker who followed Donahue to Chautauqua, a peaceful, leafy, cottage-filled, lakeside summer arts community, is quickly arrested.

The stalker's brother asks Mimi to help clear him. She's skeptical. She has her own wedding to plan. But, of course, the Chautauquan Daily reporter and relentless snoop, can't resist.

With help from her computer-savvy son Jake, Mimi sifts through layers of secrets -- of a shadowy piano teacher, a racist personal trainer and chatty chime-master, among others -- and realizes: she's been asking all the wrong questions.

The right ones unearth an ugly buried secret that puts Mimi close, maybe too close, to the real killer.

Fans of Agatha Christie and Louise Penny and "Only Murders in the Building" will enjoy this twist-filled mystery Kirkus Reviews calls, "An engaging mystery with a late twist and an especially satisfying ending."

Author Biography

Deb Pines is an award-winning headline writer and copy editor for The New York Post. A former reporter, she's also a mother of two, a former committee chair of the Mystery Writers of America, New York chapter, and a special-studies teacher in the Chautauqua Institution where her novels are set. Her debut 2013 Mimi Goldman mystery, In the Shadow of Death, is a top-seller in the Institution. Her 2017 novel Beside Still Waters, was named an IndieReader-Approved Title. She lives in New York City with her husband Dave.