The Body in the Belfry

The bell has tolled for a sharp-tongued bride-to-be in the first novel in the Agatha Award–winning series.

During her years in New York City, Faith Fairchild was convinced she'd seen pretty much everything. But the transplanted caterer/minister's wife was unprepared for the surprises awaiting her in the sleepy Massachusetts village of Aleford. And she's especially taken aback by the dead body of a pretty young thing she discovers stashed in the church's belfry.

The victim, Cindy Shepherd, was well-known locally for her acid tongue and her jilted beaux, which created a lot of bad blood and more than a few possible perpetrators—including her luckless fiancé, who had neither an alibi nor a better way to break off the engagement. Faith thinks it's terribly unfair that the police have zeroed in on the hapless boyfriend, so she sets out to uncover the truth.

But digging too deeply into the sordid secrets of a New England village tends to make the natives nervous. And an overly curious big-city lady can become just another small-town statistic in very short order.