The Cranefly Orchid Murders

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	BOCD Mystery	4-week checkout	Due 05-22-2024

Compact disc.
Read by Davina Porter.
Victoria Trumbull is a feisty ninety-two-year-old who refuses to let her age stop her from having fun--or investigating crime. When Victoria's knowledge of her native Martha's Vineyard helped to solve a murder in Deadly Nightshade, she earned her own baseball cap emblazoned with "West Tisbury Police Deputy". Now the authorities will turn to her again to help uncover another scandal on the idyllic island. Phoebe Eldridge, a short-tempered woman who lives alone, has sold the family land to a developer who made an offer that seemed too good to resist. When the Conservation Trust enlists Victoria to search that land for an endangered plant, she and her eleven-year-old after-school assistant are rewarded with the discovery of a little nest of cranefly orchids--and a body.

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

kind of mediocre submitted by camelsamba on August 1, 2017, 7:53pm I got this title via overdrive. The narrator does an acceptable job (not annoying, but not outstanding either). The story, on the other hand, is somewhat mediocre. A crotchety old woman living on some remarkable property gets tricked (everyone assumes) into selling it really cheaply to a developer. Nobody wants the development to proceed. A land conservation trust enlists (92 year old) Victoria Trumbull to see if she can find any endangered species on the property in an attempt to block development. Of course, she finds a dead body first, and the investigation begins.

But the book is full of continuity problems. For example:
• Robin is supposed to be a volunteer at the conservation trust, which made me believe he was some natural history buff or would otherwise be useful - but yet he doesn't seem to know anything about plants or animals. He's just a sidekick. Granted, his 10yo nature of following dogs down mysterious holes helps advance the plot…
• Victoria wears a ball cap proclaiming her (honorary) deputy, supposedly for helping solve a previous serial killer mystery - except that wasn't the plot of book 1 in the series, and i don't remember anything about honorary deputy at the end of that one. In fact, almost nothing from Deadly Nightshade carries over to this one.
• And the whole thing about her not being able to drive comes with allusions that it was explained earlier - except again, it wasn't. Maybe those allusions are a set up for an important plot point in a future book?

These might seem like minor quibbles, but honestly, I'm just not impressed and don't care enough about the characters to continue the series.