Moon of Violence — Ellen Douglas

A young college professor and a Navaho/Navajo student help Annie MacIver prove her father's “heart attack” was an ingeniously wrought murder.

What had happened at the house on Woodrow Lane? All yesterday, after her father had phoned her at her New York apartment, Annie MacIver had had a feeling -- a premonition that something dreadful was about to occur. And then, last night, she had got the news. Her father had died suddenly -- of a heart attack at his home in Princeton. A heart attack? Three weeks ago, an examination had showed his heart in good condition. A natural death? Tearfully, Annie wondered.

James MacIver had been a brilliant and wealthy chemist and businessman, a highly respected resident of the university town where he lived. And Annie and her brother, when they returned sorrowfully to the mansion on Woodrow Lane, learned that the night of his death he had given a dinner party for nine friends. The meal had been served and finished, and the party had reassembled in the huge living room, when James McIver complained that he could not breathe. In a matter of minutes, he was dead.

The doctor's pronouncement had been a coronary, but Annie was not convinced. Her father had been greatly worried about something when he phoned her; he had told her that if anything happened to him, she was to watch out for a green thumb! And where was the original Livy manuscript, a recent archeological discovery that her father had been reading the day he died? The priceless scroll had disappeared. And finally, that was that strange note in her father's handwriting; “PUP CAT MAY REEK LIX.” What did it mean?

Annie was alone in her suspicions only until young Dr. Hugo Janssen came to pay his respects. She was at once fascinated by the tall, rangy scholar with the keen mind and the friendly manner. And Hugo was an amateur detective.

Together, Annie and Hugo start a thorough investigation of the house on Woodrow Lane, and of the nine guests of that final dinner party. What they find is startling in its ingenuity, and clearly indicative that Annie's life is in grave danger, so Hugo introduces her to Charlie Tigertail, a Navaho Indian who is a student at the university, and who is to be her bodyguard.

But even the clever Annie, the perceptive Hugo, the wary Charlie Tigertail cannot foresee the dire events that lie ahead. The June moon, Charlie explains, is the moon of the strawberries. An evil moon -- a moon of violence.

How right he is, Annie McIver fearfully learns…