Antiques Carry On

May 24, 2021
Allan’s fast, funny 15th Trash ‘
n’ Treasures mystery (after 2020’s Antiques Fire Sale) takes brassy Vivian Borne and her long-suffering daughter, Brandy, the owners of the Trash ‘n’ Treasures antiques shop in Serenity, Iowa, to London, where, at the request of fellow Serenity antiques dealer Skylar James, they drop by the Old Curiosity Shop, whose proprietor, Humphrey Westcott, has a reprint of Murder on the Orient Express for Skylar to give his Christie-loving wife. When Humphrey is found stabbed to death with a letter-opener bearing Brandy’s fingerprints, the women are interrogated by a representative of MI5. Fortunately, CCTV footage proves the Bornes’ innocence, and they are unceremoniously sent back to Iowa, where more suspicious deaths await them. The pair investigate in their own inimitable fashion, eventually discovering a link between the murders and the copy of Murder on the Orient Express. Vivian and Brandy share narrative duties, and their amusing commentary provides much of the book’s appeal (Vivian admits she has “just a teensy-weensy, hardly-worth-mentioning, hint of bi-polar disorder”). Allan (the pen name of Barbara and Max Allan Collins) consistently entertains. Agent: Dominick Abel, Dominick Abel Literary.

May 15, 2021
An Iowa mother and daughter who sell antiques and solve mysteries fly off to England and into another case of murder. Vivian Borne has relinquished her job as sheriff but not her right, at least in her own eyes, to investigate crime. Her long-suffering daughter, Brandy, often has a different take on crime-solving. So does Brandy's fiance, Tony, the police chief in Serenity, Iowa. On a trip to England to meet the new publisher of their true-crime books, they visit a Charing Cross Road antiques shop to do a favor for fellow Serenity dealer Skylar James, who'd sold a necklace to Mr. Wescott, the owner. Since neither party wanted to pay shipping and duty, Vivian bought the necklace from Skylar and agreed to bring it to Wescott and sell it to him for the same price. At the last minute, though, Vivian decides to keep the necklace since she's been wearing it and raking in the compliments. Regardless, she agrees to come back to pick up a collectible Agatha Christie novel Wescott wants to send to Skylar as a gift. On their second trip to Wescott's, Vivian and Brandy find the door open and the dealer stabbed with a letter opener Brandy had handled earlier, earning them a trip to jail. Set free, they return home determined to investigate Skylar's involvement as well as the accidental death of a woman whose will left her daughter and son-in-law rich. In their typical fashion, they stumble from clue to clue, raising Tony's blood pressure, and discover another murder that plunges them into a dangerous situation from which Brandy's dog, Sushi, must rescue them. Although there's a sameness to Allan's long string of comic mysteries, they always entertain.

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