Mignon F. Ballad, The Angel and the Jabberwocky Murders

The Angel and the Jabberwocky Murders

Mignon F. Ballad

St. Martin's December 2006, $23.95, 272 pp.

ISBN 0312354193

In the small South Carolina town of Stone's Throw where the university is located, Guardian Angel Augusta Goodnight, who once worked the Strawberry Fields in Heaven, has lived with Lucy Nan Pilgrim for over a year. The quiet hamlet knows sudden fear when a student D. C .Hunter disappears. At first nobody is worried, thinking she just extended her vacation, but Lucy and her colleague Joy Ellen hear the screams of two of the students coming from an old shed; inside is the body of D.C. Hunter.

In her dorm room is a Jabberwocky verse from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass. The letter was never mailed, but put inside her mailbox. Four years ago, almost to the month another girl was found in the lake, knocked unconscious by a blow to her head. She had received a Jabberwocky verse. Five years before that Carla Martinez fell from the Tree House. The authorities say it was an accident, but Lucy, Nan and Augusta think all three murders are linked, and the campus handyman wants to talk to her. Before he gets a chance, Lucy Ann finds him hanging from the Tree House, a murder made to look like a suicide. Lucy wants to find the killer, but the answers are found three decades in the past, and she must be careful in the present because the culprit kills anyone who gets too close to uncovering the truth.

An Augusta Goodnight mystery is always a special treat. She adds a touch of whimsy to Mignon F. Ballard's cozies, and in THE ANGEL AND THE JABBERWOCKY MURDERS a little is needed, because the town is caught in the fear that the killer will strike again. Ms. Ballard proves that a book doesn't need violence to be a good who-done-it. In fact, it is the lack of explicit violent scenes that adds to the overwhelming fear that the readers feel for the characters, who are old, familiar and dear friends.