Аннотация

Bestselling authors Rita Mae
Brown and her feline partner,
Sneaky Pie Brown, are back for
the holidays in a mystery
featuring Mary Minor “Harry”
Haristeen, the sleuthing cats Mrs. Murphy and Pewter, and
corgi Tee Tucker. Can they save
the season from a killjoy who’s
decided to gift the festive little
town…with murder?
As Harry well knows, there’s hardly a place on earth cozier
than Crozet, Virginia, at
Christmastime. The snowflakes
drifting lazily down, the soft
glow of the winter light, the
sound of old carols in the streets…even cats Mrs. Murphy
and Pewter get into the spirit
batting ornaments and climbing
the holiday tree. In fact, it’s this
year’s tree that Harry and her
husband, Fair, have gone to fetch when they find the one
they’ve chosen grimly decorated
with a dead body.
The tree farm is run by The
Brothers of Love, a
semimonastic organization that tends to AIDS patients. The
brothers live in a monastery
atop the scenic Blue Ridge
Mountains. Harry is surprised to
find an old high-school friend
associated with The Brothers of Love. Christopher Hewitt wasn’t
a bad man, but good works
weren’t exactly one of his
priorities. But then, if even
Scrooge could turn over a new
leaf, certainly Chris could. And after the scandal that all but
destroyed his life, there were
probably few in Crozet who
needed the gift of a second
chance more.
Harry knows she shouldn’t take it personally, but it was her tree
that someone left the corpse
under. Now, as the season
grows merrier, a murderer is
growing bolder. One by one,
prominent men of Crozet are being crossed off Christmas
shopping lists and added to the
morgue. And if Harry and her
four-legged helpers aren’t very
good—and very careful—this
Christmas may be her last.