FORGET ABOUT MURDER

-- by Elizabeth Daniels Squire

Mountain moonshine and a hidden passion provide clues as Peaches Dann, the absent-minded sleuth, continues to solve murders using memory tricks. One hero of this book is a dachshund, modeled after the real dachshund in need of a home that Liz adopted. As always, peaches finds herself in frightening situations. Dangerous hidden places in the North Carolina mountains make rescue a long shot. Somebody wants Peaches out of the way, so he kidnaps her with a gun in her back.

"Walk in front of me" he said. "Straight ahead."

We crossed the main road and walked toward the gorge behind the Indian rock. Suzie's words came back to me. "Upright hollow," she'd said. "That's where the sides are so steep that you can only see the sun when it's directly overhead." She'd said no one ever went there except to gather ferns, and if you fell down and hurt yourself, on one would find you"...I shuddered....On the mountainside to my right, a patch of trillium with its three petaled scarlet blossoms was the color of blood. Early wildflowers to remind me of death, which I had to cheat somehow...

I found myself thinking: If they kill me here, they'll have a hard job burying me with all these rocks. Good! Dead or alive, I wanted to be as difficult as possible."

In FORGET ABOUT MURDER an ancient moonshiner thickens the plot. Says Squire, "I probably became intrigued with illegal moonshine, when my Grandmother, a robustly honest woman who would never touch a drop of liquor, nevertheless agreed to hide a still in her attic when the revenuers came around. Her neighbor told her, 'Mrs. B if they take my still, my children will starve this winter.' This was back in the Great Depression when people did starve. My Grandmother loved children more than she hated whiskey. So I always somehow felt related to moonshine. Later, as a reporter, I interviewed several former whiskey runners, and the son of a well known bootlegger. We mystery writers never waste anything.