Larkspur

Lark Dailey faces a weekend at the mountain lodge of
her mother’s mentor, poet Dai Llewellyn, without enthusiasm, but Lark’s
detective-lover Jay finds the proximity of a notorious pot-farm interesting.
The setting, a remote Sierra lake, is idyllic, perfect for canoeing and
wind-surfing, not to mention fireworks. Neither Lark nor Jay expects the Fourth
of July to end in murder.

Surrounded by old friends, ex-lovers, devoted
servants--and someone who does not love him--the poet collapses. He has been
poisoned by tincture of larkspur in his Campari. The irony is not lost on Lark,
whose bookstore is called Larkspur Books, nor on Jay, who is tapped to
investigate.

Jay’s investigation is complicated by the murder of
two key witnesses and by bizarre embellishments in all three killings. The
embellishments suggest that something less straightforward than greed is
driving the killer, something like madness. The tangle of suspicion widens to
include not only the poet’s weekend guests but even Lark’s charming,
book-loving clerk.

Lark worries that her mother, who comes to town after
the San Francisco funeral, may be in danger too,
because someone does not like poets, and Mary Dailey, a noted poet, is
Llewellyn’s literary executor. Her co-executor may have his own reasons for
wanting to control the relics of Dai Llewellyn’s past. As Jay awaits a search
warrant, a cocktail party of survivors gathers to honor Lark’s mother, and Lark
determines to crash it in time to prevent another poisoning. Unfortunately,
she’s not sure who the murderer is.