A Zebra Mystery Puzzler #32 - Murder at Willow Run

This thirty-second entry into the Zebra Mystery Puzzler series introduces yet another author and another new amateur sleuth.  The author is identified as "Michelle Collins," but it is uncertain whether this is the author's action name or just another in a long-line of pseudonyms used for this series.  Other than this one and book 51 in this series, I can find no other books by this author (although I find plenty of books out there written by various writers of the same name).  The copyright for the book simply belongs to Kensington Publishing Corp., which likely means this was a house psuedonym.  In any event, Collins only offers two books within this series, and this one gives readers their first taste of art director Megan Marshall.

 

Murder at Willow Run is set in a preppy little art community called "Willow Run" in the Catskills of New York.  Megan Marshall is an art gallery director who is putting together a show for artist Evan Townsend, a young man with whom she hopes to one day develop a real relationship.  The story opens with the exciting news that Marshall has managed to get a world famous art critic, Garrett Winters, to come to the show!  Winters happens to be a long-time friend of Alfred ("Alf") Barnard, who runs the Inn in which the art show will be displayed, and he has agreed to come at Alf's request.  Megan is thrilled, Evan is hesitant, and Alf is confident that everything will work out fine.  However, from the moment Winters arrives, everything goes downhill fast!

 

Collins crafts a horrifically vile person in the character of Garrett Winters. From the moment he arrives, he has nothing but nasty things to say about everyone and everything - from Evan's art (which, at this point, he has not even seen!), to the small town setting, the decor of the Inn, and the townspeople and guests at the Inn.  In fact, the man has nothing nice to say at all!  Clearly, this man deserves to die - or, at least, that's what plenty of people think.  After a rather loud confrontation with Evan in the dining room, with Evan threatening to get rid of him, to a fierce battle in the kitchen with the chef that results in his being fired, to some snide remarks to one of the local women in town, Winters finally takes his leave, going to his room upstairs.  Before long, however, he's back downstairs, demanding a different room, as the bed is too small.  Megan accommodates him, moving him from Room 4 to Room 7, making sure he's settled in and that he has locked his door from the inside before she walks away.  So, imagine her surprise, when she and Alf come up the next morning, find the door still locked with the chain, and after breaking their way, find the critic lying dead on his bed!  The door was locked, the windows are still locked - so how in the world was he murdered?

 

It's a fantastically well-written locked-room mystery that, quite frankly, had me stumped.  The first internal illustration gave me a first thought as to the identity of the killer, but as the story progressed, my thought changed time and time again.  The clues pointing to any number of people, and Collins herself even points this out with the gossip of the townspeople:  "the culprit was variously Evan Townsend, the moody and passionate painter; Claude Monteaux, the temperamental chef; Alfred Barnard for some inexplicable reason; Bertram Van Riper, the man of mystery... (p. 72) - and even this list does not account for all of the suspects.  There were also Grace and Adelaide Wimble, the aging sisters who seemed to have a history with Winters; Shelley Barnes, a local woman "far more enamored of the artist than she was of the art" (p. 23); Quentin Lacy, the rather flamboyant and dramatic director of the theater across from the Inn; Hilda Stanwick, a former watercolor artist whose career had ended quickly after a bad review; and even Garth Hendriks, the Inn's groundskeeper who lived in the upstairs of the barn just behind the Inn.  So many suspects, so many motives, but only one of them did it.  The questions for Megan is:  which one?

 

Honestly, I was wondering if Collins would go the same route as the writers of The Hardy Boys / Nancy Drew Mysteries television show did with their season two opener, which features a locked-room mystery that stumped the teen detectives and nearly made them believe in vampires!  That two-part season opener offered up a rather ingenious solution, and I thought perhaps Collins had taken a page from that show, which aired two years before this book was published.  It certainly would have provided a clever twist, making the killer one of the least likely suspects!  But Collins went an entirely different route, for which I applauded her, as it made it much more difficult to figure out (for the reader).  While the clue on the front cover is very subtle, the internal illustrations offer very little actual clues - one offers no clue at all, one offers a very clear misdirect, two offer a connected clue that you have to really pay attention to catch, and the last two offers the clues that clinch it!

 

The author does reference the use of "flurazepam," which is referred to as "a soporific marketed under the trade name of Dalmane" (p. 107).  This is an actual drug that is prescribed by doctors for short-term treatment of sever insomnia.  The brand name of "Dalmane" has been discontinued in the United States, but flurazepam, which is the generic version, is still prescribed.  Obviously, this book was written long before the brand name medicine was discontinued in 2017.

 

As with most books in this series, there is no identification of the cover artist, and none of the internal illustrations are signed and no credit given - leaving it a mystery as to who provided the art.  I think it bears repeating what a disservice these publishers did back in the day by failing to give credit to cover artists, as well as internal illustrators - particularly for a series like this, where the art plays (or is supposed to play) just as important of a role in helping the reader solve the mystery as the story itself.  With this day and age of information at the tips of our fingers on the internet, one would think the information would be easy to find; but, alas, it is not.  Thus, the identity of these artists remain a mystery unsolved...

 

This mystery was extremely enjoyable, very well written, and definitely kept me guessing.  I am glad to know I will get at least one more mystery by Collins before the end of this series!

 

RATING:  10 blood-stained hotel towels in the trunk of a car out of 10 for taking the "locked room mystery" to a whole new level and giving us a fantastic new sleuth who is up for the challenge!