When Farberville, Arkansas, plays host to its first-ever mystery convention--Murder Comes to Campus--local bookseller Claire Malloy finds herself in the midst of barely controlled mayhem. Bad enough that she is surrounded by peevishly capricious authors; bad enough that Roxanne Small, renowned (and feared) mystery editor, arrives unexpectedly, to the disgruntlement of said authors. But add in the news that Claire's amour, police detective Peter Rosen, has decided to do a little propagating of the species--with his ex-wife--well, all things considered, Claire would rather be in Philadelphia. Or just about anywhere without temperamental authors, irritable teenage daughters who have mastered the art of Speaking in Capital Letters, and sudden death. But when one of the convention attendees dies in a suspicious accident, and Roxanne Small turns up at the bottom of a cistern with a severe case of shattered skull, Claire decides that selling books to rabid fans takes second place to ferreting out the unlovely skeletons in the publishing world's closet. A Conventional Corpse finds Claire in typically acerbic form; Joan Hess is a master at presenting a decidedly cockeyed world in precise and amusing language. Claire's opinion of her glibly sarcastic daughter is typical: "Two years until I could pack her off to college, I reminded myself as I closed her door. Or perhaps I could surreptitiously sign her up for the Peace Corps and arrange an assignment to a country in which headhunting was still a popular sport. Or leave her in a basket at the door of a convent in a newly autonomized country such as Azerbaijan--sans passport."

not AR rated