Publisher's Synopsis
Iowa, 1954: To spite one another, two feuding brothers compete to build the most impressive house. When the bully of the pair is found brutally slain, the other brother's massive house is destroyed in a spectacular fire. In addition to the surviving brother, suspects include the murdered man's abused spouse and greedy nephews who expect to inherit the dead man's ill-gotten fortune. Six quirky friends, calling themselves the Rounders, solve the case by examining the true story of the 1925 killing of a female Prohibition leader, shot as she was set to release the names of local bootleggers. The strange trail the Rounders follow leads them to the smuggling of whiskey from Saint Louis to Iowa. It gets messy when the daughter of the slain Prohibition leader returns to town and takes a job with one of the Rounders-with disastrous and scary results. Before the crime is solved, the bumbling sheriff is shot arresting a volatile suspect, and someone else deviously confesses to murder in order to send the Rounders off the scent. The mystery is set in the complex culture of the 1950s: movies and music, poodle skirts and party lines, movie stars and cars, foods and fashions-a world without cell phones, computers, or the Internet. Written in the style of English cozies, "Murder for Spite" avoids blood and gore, setting the murders 'off scene, ' and avoiding graphic sex or language.
