The Cemetery Yew

Posted on by Cynthia Riggs
The Cemetery Yew There s than one reason the new West Tisbury police chief officially made year old Victoria Trumbull her deputy For one thing Victoria knows just about everything about everyone in town and a lot

There s than one reason the new West Tisbury police chief officially made 92 year old Victoria Trumbull her deputy For one thing, Victoria knows just about everything about everyone in town, and a lot about the rest of the Martha s Vineyard year round population as well Not to mention their ancestors Victoria may be afflicted with the usual aches and pains that desThere s than one reason the new West Tisbury police chief officially made 92 year old Victoria Trumbull her deputy For one thing, Victoria knows just about everything about everyone in town, and a lot about the rest of the Martha s Vineyard year round population as well Not to mention their ancestors Victoria may be afflicted with the usual aches and pains that descend on nonagenarians she has a cutoff shoe to accommodate her bunion, and a stout stick to help her on her walks across the fields and in the woods But she is as sharp and as sharpeyed as the proverbial tack So it s not odd that when Victoria is the only one who notices something amiss among the gravestones of the West Tisbury cemetery, the chief listens.Something is indeed amiss Responding to a request by presumed relatives in the Midwest to disinter a coffin for reburying elsewhere, things go wrong from the start The driver of the hearse coming to collect the coffin disappears during the Island ferry trip in a rainstorm Other deaths some of them irrefutably murder, the others suspicious follow And when as a last measure the coffin is found, dug up and opened, it does not contain the expected body Insult upon injury, the coffin itself disappears.Meanwhile, the available for rent bedroom in Victoria s house has been taken over by a woman relative of one of their neighbors and her raucous toucan, a bird as spoiled as the most bratty millionaire s hei

  • ☆ The Cemetery Yew ↠ Cynthia Riggs
    338 Cynthia Riggs
The Cemetery Yew

  1. Cynthia Riggs, a tall gray haired and imposing figure, is a 13th generation Islander, the mother of five and daughter of author and poet Dionis Coffin Riggs and school principal and printmaker Sidney N Riggs.With a degree in geology, her own remarkable resum writing for the National Geographic Society and Smithsonian she spent two months in Antarctica , working in public relations for the American Petroleum Institute, operating boat charters she lived on a 44 foot houseboat for 12 years , running the Chesapeake Bay Ferry Boat Company, and being a rigger at Martha s Vineyard Shipyard After enrolling six years ago in the Master of Fine Arts creative writing program at Vermont College, Riggs found yet another calling She has become a successful mystery writer.All her mysteries take place on the Vineyard, and all draw from local scenes and fictionalized composites of Island characters She knows them all well, having been a two time candidate for West Tisbury selectman No, I don t think I ll do that again , a commissioner on the Martha s Vineyard Commission, a member of what is now the Martha s Vineyard Arts Council, and an active Island voice in both politics and human rights causes.

467 Reply to “The Cemetery Yew”

  2. Life on the Vinyard ought to be quiet, but somehow things don t work out that way West Tisbury is home to Victoria Trumbull, 92 years old, not as physically agile as she used to be, but mentally scarily sharp and she knows nearly everyone, or at least their families and the family history That s why Casey, the Chief of Police hired from off island, has appointed Victoria as her deputy.The cemetery director, also town selectman, Denny Rhodes, gets a seemingly ordinary request from a family no lon [...]

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  4. If you like Murder She Wrote then this series would be of the same, with different characters Thanks goodness Jessica Fletcher was not 92, though The writing is OK, the plotting is rather loosely done, and I don t think it is a very crafty piece of work Once again, the title has very little to do with the story Compare it to the Darling Dahlias series by Susan Wittig Albert and it falls short on the plant reference.

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  5. A Halloween prank results in a missing coffin The missing coffin results in multiple murders What happened to the coffin Who is the killer What is the Motive Victoria meets an adversary that may well be her match

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  6. Clearly these books are growing on me And this time, the killer snuck up on me, which makes it lots of fun Just enough hints and clues to make me think it might be who I thought it was, while still making me second guess myself.

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  7. Cozy Mystery is Cozy And Confusing if you re starting this series partway thru and don t know any of the characters.

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  8. Warning contains spoilers for both this book and book 8 Death and Honesty So after reading books 3 and 8 I was seriously disappointed Now these weren t my favorites to start with, because I m not a fan of the multiple person point of view But the fact that the motives for the killers in both books was damn near identical, was pretty much unforgivable.In Cemetery Yew the killer needs money because she lost everything in dot investing and somehow ends up owing money to the mob.In Death and Honesty [...]

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  9. There s a joke that Cabot Cove, Maine is the murder capital of the USA Well West Tisbury, Massachusetts seems to be giving them a run for their money, with three homicides in a row off season no less This story moved S L O W L Y, with the first dead body not appearing until after the halfway point Granted I m reading the series for the local details, which are fine, but there s so much backstory and chatter among the locals that I began to despair of anyone dying Second half has all of the will [...]

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  10. This is an extremely enjoyable Cozy Geezer Lit with an amazing 92 year old character named Victoria Trumbull I was not able to get a hold of book 2 in the series but I understand that Victoria is now deputized She is very observant, knowledgeable about the town and its people as well as rich with the wisdom of her age, and unflappable in the presence of danger.This story covers crimes committed by a few State Department big wigs who probably already make money then an average citizen They join [...]

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  11. Cynthia Riggs has created a very interesting character Victoria Trumbell is 92 years old and a lifelong resident of Martha s Vineyard The sheriff chief of police of her town, an outsider, has made her a deputy and relies on her knowledge of the intricate relationships and politics, as well as the fact that she is related to many of the people on the island, so she rely on Vitoria to help her navigate the local climate in her investigations This is a complicated story, but still easy to follow Vi [...]

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  12. Who wouldn t be enchanted with Victoria Trumbull She is 92 years old, she is a deputy in the West Tisbury Police Department on Martha s Vineyard, and she is sharp as a tack Victoria knows just about everyone in town and remembers all of the skeltons in their family closets In this third in the series, an empty coffin is discovered in the West Tisbury Cemetery and then a series of baffling murders begin to occur in and around town The strange thing is that all of the victims are retired foreign s [...]

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  13. This was a typical cosy mystery with the usual range of friendly small town residents, although the age of some of these is a bit of a surprise since our detective is in her nineties and some of her friends are well up there The only time you notice the age, though, is when people are plowing around in the snow and wind, or she needs some help climbing up out of a grave No matter how alert people are or how willing their systems there are very few people in their nineties who could be as quickly [...]

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  14. A rather convoluted tale and not as interesting as I d hoped given the unusual sleuth, a 92 year old deputy in the Martha s Vineyard police department Perhaps I would have felt involved if I had read the previous 2 volumes and was familiar with the cast of characters Overall it just felt a bit flat in both story and characters with a mystery that was far from absorbing I probably won t continue with the series although I do find the titles and cover art appealing It s weird that Victoria stays [...]

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  15. Victoria Trumbull is back She is 92 years old and a deputy police officer on Martha s Vineyard She is in the midst of a lot of problems A body that is to be exhumed is not buried wheree it is supposed to be bodies keep turning up coffins are found full of sand Victoria knows all and gets to the bottom without turning much of a hair She is remarkable This book gets a little frenzied because there is so much going on at once but it all gets sorted out quickly and efficiently by Victoria This is a [...]

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  16. You ve got to love a 92 year old, spunky, smart sleuth with a dry sense of humor I really like the setting Martha s Vineyard and the recurring characters I guessed the perp in the first couple of pages, but Rigg s writing style kept me reading long past the time I should have gotten ready for work this morning The only thing that could have been improved was the way Riggs wrote the teen characters no teenager I know has such terrible grammar or uses like quite so much.

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  17. Audio I usually hate mysteries with old, fuss budget ladies sticking their nose into other people s business like Miss Marple, but this was a good one The plot was plausible, State Dept employees buying gems and spiriting them away The natural history of New England was lovely, and I liked this old biddy She was smart and knew her place.

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  18. I continue to enjoy listening to this Martha s Vineyard series, with it s collection of engaging characters and pleasantly puzzling plots This one is almost a locked room mystery, always a hills challenge for a mystery writer.

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  19. I ve started reading this book long time ago, but I think that I will make a return D This book is shrouded in mystery

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  21. Last ditch book on tape for the drive Maybe the narrator was just awful but this was quite bad and often silence seemed preferable.

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  24. Another delightful cozy story with Victoria Trumbull I chuckled when Victoria talks of going to read to the elderly since she s 92, but since she s hail and hearty it makes a kind of sense.

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  27. much better than average cozy mystery I love that the sleuth is in her nineties but it also worries me because of the finality of the stories How long can she keep this up

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  30. I found this to be a cleverly written and entertaining story with an unexpected conclusion A thoroughly fun read.

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