The Christine Bennett Mysteries Series

MAYDAY!

When Christine Bennett is invited on a sightseeing trip to Arizona, she jumps at the chance for a little adventure. But the excursion reminds her of a former high school classmate, Heinz Gruner, who died twenty years earlier on Cinco de Mayo while hiking Picacho Peak near Tucson. Chris decides to contact Heinz’s mother, who has been wondering all these years how her beloved son, an experienced hiker, plunged to his death. Her one wish is to find out the truth–whether it was an accident, as the police report claimed, or murder.

So Chris begins sleuthing–tracking down anyone and everyone connected to her old classmate. Determined to unravel a mystery, if there is indeed one to unravel, Chris will stop at nothing to uncover the dire secrets that exist about that fateful day in May.

A phone call warning Christine Bennett that a body will be found is traced to the apartment of an attractive couple about to celebrate their 25th wedding… read The Silver Anniversary Murder to find out more!

TODAY, I AM A DEAD MAN

For suburban sleuth Christine Bennett, the chance to visit the Holy Land is a dream come true. Her best friend Melanie Gross will be in Jerusalem at the same time for the Bar Mitzvah of her very wealthy cousin. Although he’s long past the customary age of thirteen, Gabe is planning a lavish party and is flying family and friends over from the States to celebrate. Not accustomed to traveling, Christine is thrilled to have Melanie along to share the experience.

The beauty and mystery of the golden city is overwhelming, and Christine is excited about exploring every part of it—until Gabe disappears without a trace, turning her vacation tour into a trail of clues that leads to a cold and cunning killer. . . .

IT’S PARTY TIME FOR A KILLER

Suburban sleuth Christine Bennett is moved and intrigued by two poignant mementos treasured by her late Aunt May. The first is a sad little note mourning the death of a young man lost in a Connecticut wood; the other, an obituary honoring a wealthy local manufacturer who committed suicide just after his splendid fiftieth birthday celebration.

Why did her aunt never mention these virtually simultaneous tragedies? Chris’s investigative instincts are irresistibly whetted–especially by the bizarre discovery that the victims, though strangers, were found wearing each other’s sneakers. And as she slices through the layers of the past, she uncovers the horrible truth that murder was just the icing on the cake. . . .

A SECOND CHANCE TO DIE

For his favorite charity, the high school drama club, Willard Platt fakes his own murder as an April Fool stunt. But the repeat performance later that day is the real thing. And some, including the next-door neighbor, say he deserved it.

Investigator (and ex-nun) Christine Bennett is haunted by the sad state of Willard’s survivors. His widow roams the road at night. His son has a troubled marriage and bizarre secret life. Behind this suburban family’s respectable facade, violent passions are seething. For this is not the first tragedy to strike them. Nor will it be the last. . . .

TRUE CONFESSION–OR FALSE?

Investigator (and former nun) Christine Bennett is appalled when a young woman claims to be the natural daughter of Sister Joseph, beloved Superior at St. Stephen’s and Chris’s dearest friend. But after the girl is murdered, all the evidence leads the police to believe she was telling the truth–and that Sister Joseph is the prime suspect.

Can evidence ever lie? Chris prays that it can. But as she frantically searches for the link between the anonymous woman who gave away her newborn two decades ago and a brutal murder this Mother’s Day, it seems only a miracle can save Sister Joseph from a life behind bars.

FRIENDS UNTIL DEATH

Every year, the Morris Avenue Boys–chums since childhood–gather for a Father’s Day reunion dinner. Now late in middle age, these men can bask in the rewards of honest success. So which of them seizes the opportunity that fateful evening to pull out an ice pick and stab to death the group’s most celebrated member, novelist Arthur Wein?

As investigator (and former nun) Christine Bennett peels back the layers of the past, forty years’ worth of secrets emerge from the shadows–and the web of lies, theft, adultery, and blackmail woven by the once-innocent Bronx playmates rivals even the darkest plot of the dead man’s novels. But in real life, this flesh-and-blood villain may never be caught. . . .

MURDER BURNS ON FIRE ISLAND

Island old-timers are stunned by the shooting death of Blue Harbor’s popular fire chief, followed by the mysterious torching of his house. Rumors soon begin to flare up about the chief’s rumored affairs with a vacationing lady lawyer and a girl half his age.

But when former nun (now sleuth) Christine Bennett and her police detective husband start asking questions, a thick fog of evasiveness closes in. For this is not the first fire to scorch Blue Harbor. Nor, Chris suspects, is it the first murder–as she soon discovers that the passions that turn good people bad run long and deep and deadly. . . .

The party’s over . . . 

On December 30th, Susan Stark was dropped off in front of her parents’ house. She hasn’t been heard from since. Not a good scenario, especially in New York.

Former nun (now crime investigator) Christine Bennett fears the worst. Armed with only a few phone numbers and a photo of Susan, she steps into the missing girl’s life—and meets a Susan that neither her parents nor her boyfriend knew existed . . . with strange obsessions and a secret life that may have lured her to a deadly end.

THE BIG CHILL



What really happened that tragic Valentine’s night on Lake Erie? No one knows. Three old buddies–reckless Matty, successful Clark, clever Val–decided to cap Val’s birthday celebration with a stroll across the frozen lake. They never returned. Matty’s scarf was found snagged on broken ice.



After the thaw, only the bodies of Clark and Matty are recovered–the latter with a bullet in it. Val remains missing, now a murder suspect. His desperate wife pleads with ex-nun investigator Christine Bennett to find him and prove his innocence.



A tall order, especially when Chris starts hunting for clues in the lives of these respectable suburbanites and their wives. And when she closes in on a truth that chills her to the bone, she suddenly finds herself skating on very thin ice.

FINAL QUESTIONS.

Until someone killed her, the only mystery about adorable Iris Grodnik was why she had never married. But for fifteen years, her strange disappearance and murder during a Passover seder has remained a troubling piece of family history.

So when Iris’s relatives ask ex-nun Chris Bennett–now the wife of a New York City cop–to make one last attempt to learn the truth, she reluctantly consents. Iris’s old friends and suitors have scattered, and Chris soon suspects that some of the relatives are not telling her all they know about Iris’s life and death.

Then, in the dusty depths of a hall closet, she finds an old leather purse–and her worst forebodings about Iris Grodnik’s haunting murder begin to be fulfilled. . . .

A CELEBRATION OF ABUNDANCE BECOMES A DAY OF LOSS.
More than a year ago Natalie Gordon went to buy a balloon at the Thanksgiving Day Parade and dissolved into thin air. The police and a private investigator still have no leads. So when Natalie’s despairing husband pleads with ex-nun Christine Bennett to help, she can’t say no.
Not only are Natalie’s present whereabouts a mystery, but so is her past. Someone has stripped her personnel file in her old office. Even her husband knows strangely little about her.
Starting with a cardboard box of Natalie’s belongings–a few books, keys, some cosmetics–Chris searches for a life someone has tried very hard to erase and finds a cast of characters so chilling that murder seems not only inevitable but likely to happen again. . . .

Murder spoils the holiday for the nuns at St. Stephen’s Covenant. . . .

It’s a snowy Christmas at St. Stephen’s Convent, where a cheerful party awaits an old friend and former confessor, Father Hudson McCormick. But he never reaches his destination.

Christine Bennett, a former St. Stephen’s nun, arrives to investigate the disappearance. But the nuns are mum until an old scandal involving the priest and a St. Stephen’s novice rears its ugly head. Has Father McCormick, unable to face the scene of his sins, gone underground? Or has someone taken belated revenge, ensuring that the truth will never be known?

Model police officer Scotty McVeigh was one of New York’s finest, until someone pumped a pair of bullets into his body on St. Patrick’s Day. Former nun Christine Bennett and her police-detective boyfriend find this motiveless murder puzzling. Could there be a connection between McVeigh’s murder and the other unsolved murders of off-duty cops?

Praying for a break, Christine pursues a killer along a strange path: a pilgrimage that takes her from a suburban covenant to a Brooklyn fruit market and deep into the sacrosanct world of the NYPD.

Former nun Christine Bennett is looking forward to the christening of her friend Maddie’s baby. But when she goes to the church basement of the town that was flooded out thirty years before, Christine stumbles upon the skeletel remains of a body–the grim result of a thirty-year old murder. Trying to sort out the sordid puzzle from the past, Christine manages to unravel the dark secets of the once close-knit community, and also reveals a killer who’s not afraid to kill again….