Botanist and garden shop owner Peggy Lee is having a bad time of it.  The worst drought in North Carolina history has killed the business at Peggy’s shop, The Potting Shed, and Peggy’s parents have moved to Charlotte, forcing Peggy to hide boyfriend Steve’s live-in status.  Because business is so slow, Peggy agrees to go with her mother on an artifact dig.  Instead of finding old pottery shards and bones, they uncover a fresh corpse. The “dead geriatric socialite” (the indelicate words of the first policeman on the scene) is one of the most esteemed members of the Shamrock Historical Society–and the aunt of the police chief.  The ladies want to know what’s happened, and so does the Charlotte power structure. When it appears that the victim died from ingesting yew berries, Peggy knows she has to get involved.  The book includes tips for successful gardening when water is in short supply.

This is the fifth novel in the Peggy Lee Garden Mysteries series.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

Posted: September 13th, 2009 under 2000-, 2009, Lavene, Jim and Joyce, Mecklenburg, Mystery, Novels in Series, Piedmont.
Comments: none

Mary Catherine Roberts is a pet psychic with her own syndicated radio show. Even without such a distinctive vocation, Mary Catherine would never be just a face in the crowd.  She’s a showy dresser, someone who speaks up for herself, and she runs a clinic for injured and abandoned animals right in the heart of downtown Wilmington.  One day on her way home from the radio station, Mary Catherine hears the voice of an injured, frightened animal.  She follows the voice to a house in Wilmington’s historic district.  The front door opens at her touch, and in the parlor Mary Catherine finds the body of a middle-aged woman and a bleeding turtle.  The dead woman was the aunt of the radio station manager, Colin Jamison.  The police suspect him of the murder, but Mary Catherine knows he’s not capable of it and Tommy, the turtle, assures her that Colin is not the killer.  Mary Catherine tries to work with the police (who give no credence to her insights) even as her life is complicated by the attentions of two men who show interest in becoming Mary Catherine’s husband #5.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

Posted: August 20th, 2009 under 2000-, 2008, Coast, Lavene, Jim and Joyce, Mystery, New Hanover.
Comments: none

What an ending to the Sharyn Howard mystery series! Sheriff Howard confounds her colleagues and family by breaking off her long-time romantic relationship with county coroner Nick Thomopolis and taking up with sleazy state senator Jack Winter.  Sharyn had previously been suspicious of Winter, seeing him as a corrupt political operative and suspecting him of involvement in her father’s death.  Now she’s his arm candy!  People give Sharyn an earful on this, but her moves are part of a plan hatched by the FBI to bring Winter to justice.  As the plan moves forward, Sharyn and her deputies contend with snow-related emergencies, office romances, and break-ins and murders that may or may not be related to Senator Winter.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

Posted: July 27th, 2009 under 2000-, 2007, Lavene, Jim and Joyce, Montgomery, Mystery, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Novels in Series, Piedmont.
Comments: none

In some workplaces, colleagues come to feel like family.  That’s how Sheriff Sharyn Howard feels about some of the men and women in her department.  When her assistant, Trudy Robinson, is linked to two murders and Trudy’s husband, a deputy sheriff, confesses to the killings to protect his wife, Sheriff Howard goes into overdrive.  She’s sure that the killings have to do with skulduggery at the speedway, but she’s hampered by the community’s anger over the death of a popular driver and the FBI’s unexplained interest in the case.  This is the eleventh Sharyn Howard mystery.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

Posted: July 19th, 2009 under 2000-, 2005, Lavene, Jim and Joyce, Montgomery, Mystery, Novels in Series, Piedmont.
Comments: none

When Sheriff Sharyn Howard leaves Diamond Springs to attend a law enforcement training retreat, her staff must solve a murder and deal with a sniper in town.  Meanwhile, Sharyn has her own problems.  One of her deputies is seriously injured when he falls down an old mine shaft, another man is found dead in the woods, and several others are killed when a car explodes.  Unfortunately, the retreat is in an abandoned mining town on isolated Sweet Potato Mountain, their radio is broken, and a vicious storm begins flooding the area streams.  This is the tenth book in the series of Sharyn Howard mysteries.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library Catalog.

Posted: May 11th, 2009 under 2000-, 2004, Lavene, Jim and Joyce, Montgomery, Mystery, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Novels in Series, Piedmont.
Comments: none

According to local legend, Navy Captain Billy Bost crashed his plane into Diamond Mountain Lake in 1944. More than 50 years later a Pulitzer Prize winning author comes to the mountain town of Diamond Mountain determined to find the plane, but he disappears and is found dead a few days later. Once the plane is raised, the police discover that the World War II pilot died of a gunshot wound, not the crash. Now Sheriff Sharyn Howard has to discover who killed the pilot and who killed the author writing about him. This is the second book in the Sharyn Howard series of mysteries.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

Posted: April 20th, 2009 under 2000, 2000-, Lavene, Jim and Joyce, Montgomery, Mystery, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Novels in Series, Piedmont.
Comments: none

It definitely isn’t Stephen King, but the plot of Jim and Joyce Lavene’s Last Dance does feature a girl named Carrie whose prom experience is less than stellar. In fact, Carrie Sommers, prom queen of Diamond Springs High School, is murdered in the school’s parking lot. Sheriff Sharyn Howard believes that the case is similar enough to a prom-night murder that her father investigated 10 years ago that she reopens the old case. With the original murder suspect on death row, local and state politicians getting involved, and her mother worried about damage to her father’s reputation, Sharyn has her hands full in this book, the first of the Sharyn Howard Mysteries set in the fictional Uwharrie Mountain town of Diamond Springs.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library Catalog.

Posted: February 19th, 2009 under 1990-1999, 1999, Lavene, Jim and Joyce, Montgomery, Mystery, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Novels in Series, Piedmont.
Comments: 1

When lawyer Park Lamonte dies after his car plummets off an overpass, the police first suspect that he committed suicide. Then attention shifts to his wife Beth and the accusations against her grow louder after Park’s mother is also killed. Charlotte-based botanist and garden shop owner Peggy Lee doesn’t think Beth is guilty and uses her experience and expertise with plants to try to free the widow from police custody. The story includes winter gardening tips and discussions of environmental topics, and features characters from the previous Peggy Lee stories, including Peggy’s boyfriend Steve, her online chess partner Nightflyer, and her unruly dog Shakespeare.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library Catalog.

Posted: January 30th, 2009 under 2006, Lavene, Jim and Joyce, Mecklenburg, Mystery, Novels in Series, Piedmont.
Comments: none

In Poisoned Petals, the third of the Peggy Lee Garden Mysteries, botanist Peggy’s Spring is a busy one. She is juggling teaching responsibilities, work at The Potting Shed, and her romance with boyfriend Steve. When the “accidental” death of an old friend–and a fellow botanist–is followed by his brother’s mysterious death only a few weeks later, Peggy adds more to her plate and starts poking around in both cases. Plant-based clues and the fact that both men were tied to the same charity add more fuel to the mystery, and hints dropped by Peggy’s online chess partner and sometime-informant, Nightflyer, help her on her quest for the truth.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library Catalog.

Posted: November 3rd, 2008 under 2000-, 2007, Lavene, Jim and Joyce, Mecklenburg, Mystery, Novels in Series, Piedmont.
Comments: none

Mild-mannered garden-shop owner Peggy Lee often finds herself investigating mysteries, but at least in Perfect Poison she’s now a contractor for the Charlotte Police and will get paid for her troubles! Peggy starts her day at a funeral and ends up using her new forensic training at the scene of a seemingly-accidental drowning. She gets her second case a few days later, and this one seems hinky from the start. Why would a woman who drowned in a Charlotte-area swimming pool have wild, lake-growing plants on her body? As accusations cast suspicions on a friend and clues reveal similarities in the two deaths, Peggy tries to solve both cases and struggles to keep her shop open. Fans of the previous Peggy Lee Garden Mysteries will recognize familiar characters in this fourth book, including Peggy’s boyfriend Steve, son Paul, and the mysterious Nightflyer.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library Catalog.

Posted: September 11th, 2008 under 2000-, 2008, Lavene, Jim and Joyce, Mecklenburg, Mystery, Novels in Series, Piedmont, Stanly.
Comments: none