“The headmistress wants to see you.” Words to strike terror in the heart of any inmate of St. Roberta’s boarding school. Fortunately for Ellie, she is no longer a pudgy, wayward pupil but a happily married mother and interior designer with a beautiful home by the sea. Still, thanks to her success as an amateur local sleuth, Ellie has been summoned.
St. Roberta’s needs Ellie’s help now that the former games mistress, Ms. Chips, has retired. Could Ellie please come back on campus and find out who has stolen the Loverly sports trophy—and is seeking to bring embarrassment to the school? Her less than rosy memories of being a student notwithstanding, Ellie cannot refuse headmistress Mrs. Battle’s entreaties. Soon she finds herself in the thick of boarding school life, where an apparent schoolgirl prank gives way to murder.
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“Engaging Ellie provides a peek at boarding-school charms and horrors while solving one of her more intriguing cases.”—Kirkus Reviews
DOROTHY CANNELL, a mother of four, grandmother of ten, and owner of a King Charles Spaniel, was born in England and moved to the United States when she was twenty. After living for years in Peoria, Illinois, she and her husband moved to Maine. On a lark twenty years ago, she took a writing class. The product of that class, her first Ellie Haskell novel, The Thin Woman, was selected as one of the 100 Favorite Mysteries of the Twentieth Century by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association. The thirteenth mystery featuring Ellie, whom Booklist describes as “part Miss Marple, part modern British mum,” is She Shoots to Conquer—now available, in hardcover, from Minotaur Books.
Dorothy Cannell