The Winter Women Murders: A Wyn Lewis Mystery

An undemanding plot and a campy narrative laced with trendy names make this second Wyn Lewis mystery, following The Fat Boy Murders , ideal reading for a beach, especially one on Long Island, the story's setting. A real estate lawyer in fashionable Waggs Neck Harbor, Wyn is happy with her life--her career, her vintage Jaguar convertible and her adorable lover, Tommy Handwerk (a master carpenter)--until the death of the founder of the town's Annual Literary Arts Symposium (ALAS). Rhodesia Comfort Noble, the director's daughter, returns from California to take over the event and summarily replaces the ALAS executive director with her lover, Peter. She also plans to oust the women who have traditionally run the symposium, winter residents of the town, and wishes she could change this year's theme: New Directions in Women's Literature. Featured speakers include a local resident known as the ``Midwife of the Sexual Movement,'' a writer self-described as the ``Charlotte Bronte of the Feminist Free Sex Movement'' and beautiful novelist Annie Vasquez. As Tommy seems to fall under Annie's spell, Wyn watches her love life and the symposium disintegrate when first one and then another of the speakers is strangled to death. Throwing herself into the investigation with the chief of police, Wyn follows inheritance and real estate clues to solve the crimes. (July)