A Conventional Corpse: A Claire Malloy Mystery

New York: St. Martin's Minotaur. Fine in Fine dust jacket. 2000. First Edition. Hardcover. 288 pages. A Claire Malloy Mystery, No. 13. Farberville, Arkansas is playing to host to its first ever mystery convention with five major mystery writers - each representing a different sub-genre in the mystery world - making the trek to the local college for Murder Comes to Campus.Bookseller Claire Malloy is looking forward to meeting some of her favorite writers and, of course, selling books to the attendees.But her plans for a calm, profitable weekend are soon laid to waste when the original organizer is hospitalized and Claire is dragooned into running the show.Finding herself in the midst of barely controlled chaos, Claire has to deal with five writers, each with a distinct set of idiosyncrasies and difficulties (including one who arrives with Wimple, her crime-solving cat, in tow).To make matters worse, the feared, distrusted, and disliked mystery editor of Paradigm House, Roxanne Small, puts in a unscheduled appearance at the conference to the surprise of all and the delight of few. With Claire's own love-life woes with local police detective Peter Rosen added in, things have never been worse.Until things get worse.One of the conference attendees dies in a car accident, Wimple-the-cat disappears from Claire's home and now cannot be located, and Roxanne Small is no where to be found - making it evident that in Farberville the murder mystery is more than a literary genre. .