The Death at Yew Corner — Richard Forrest

A no-nonsense politician and her children's author husband search for answers to a retirement-home homicide in this gripping small-town murder mystery.

Fabian Bunting wheels herself down the hallway of the nursing home, opera glasses clutched in her gnarled old hands. Outside, nurses on strike have formed a picket line, and Fabian wants to watch the commotion. As she peers through her binoculars, she sees something incredible: two men beating another senseless and tossing the victim into the back of a van. One of the thugs sees her, and before she can call for help, he has raced upstairs and tossed the helpless old woman into a scalding steam bath to boil alive.
 
In her younger days, Fabian was a brilliant scholar, and the favorite professor of Connecticut politician Bea Wentworth, who has just been defeated in a re-election campaign. Bea refuses to believe her old teacher's death was an accident and begins investigating. With the help of her husband, Lyon, a hot-air ballooning children's author, she'll find the answers to Fabian's grisly murder lie at the center of an impossible locked-room puzzle.
 
The Lyon and Bea Wentworth Mysteries are unique for their blend of traditional mystery elements and hard-driving, page-turning action. “[This] is the most traditional book in the series to date,” wrote the New York Times. “It also may be the best.”
 
The Death at Yew Corner is the 5th book in the Lyon and Bea Wentworth Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.

“[Forrest] writes with a sure hand, and as always, leavens the writing with a touch of humor. . . . A neat, well-plotted, expertly written job.” -- The New York Times
 
Praise for the Lyon and Bea Wentworth Mysteries
“[A] superb novel of detection . . . An intricate plot intelligently controlled.” -- Publishers Weekly on A Child's Garden of Death
 
“The writing is stylish and the plotting swift and well knit: a pleasure.” -- Booklist on The Pied Piper of Death