Product Description

hings have finally calmed down enough for cozy heroine Joan Spencer and her new husband, Lt. Fred Lundquist, to take a long-delayed honeymoon to celebrate their three-month-old nuptials. Joan is glad that shell finally get to see Bishop Hill, the tiny historic Swedish-American community where Fred grew up, but shes a bit nervous about meeting her in-laws for the first time.5nfortunately, Freds mother suffers from Alzheimers and is further down the road than they realized. But before they can even begin to deal with that, Mrs. Lundquist witnesses a brutal murder. Suddenly everyone in Bishop Hill is a suspect, and the only person with the key to unlock the mystery is an eldely woman who floats in and out of clarity, often undetected. Joan must get close enough to her new mother-in-law to figure out what really happened that night, and to protect her and her extended family from a killer who is bound to strike again. Witness in Bishop Hill marks a triumphant return for author Sara Hoskinson Frommer, whose previous Joan Spencer novels have won her a dedicated following.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1481407 in Books
• Published on: 2002-11-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

From Publishers Weekly
When Joan and new husband Lt. Fred Lundquist travel to Bishop Hill for a belated honeymoon, the only witness to murder in the small Swedish-American community is Fred's Alzheimer's-afflicted mother in Witness in Bishop Hill, Sara Hoskinson Frommer's (The Vanishing Violinist) latest appealing Joan Spencer mystery. Expect plenty of cozy chills as Joan strives to prevent a vicious killer from striking again.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Joan Spencer, musically inclined widow of Oliver, Indiana, and her new husband, Detective Lieutenant Fred Lundquist, are called to visit Fred's family in Bishop Hill just before Christmas. The Swedish American community there is a perfect picture for the holiday season, but Fred finds his sister needing a break from constant attendance on their mother, Helga. It doesn't take long for Joan and Fred to realize that Helga has Alzheimer's. When Helga is the only witness to the murder of an old friend's son, Joan and Fred have a mystery to solve along with keeping Helga safe from the murderer and from herself. The care and handling of Alzheimer's victims is neatly enfolded in this tale, which also gently treats Swedish Christmas customs; the tender and fraught relationship between Joan's college-age son Andrew, his new stepfather, and herself; and the long memories of small towns. Frommer is a brisk and clean writer, and she handles the rueful ambivalence of middle age very well indeed. GraceAnne DeCandido
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author
Sara Hoskinson Frommer is the author of four previous Joan Spencer mysteries: The Vanishing Violinist, Murder & Sullivan, Buried in Quilts, and Murder in C Major. She lives in Bloomington, Indiana, and grew up a few miles from Bishop Hill.

Customer Reviews

strong cozy
Married for three months, Oliver, Indiana Detective Lieutenant Fred Lundquist and his second wife Joan, mother of two grown children and director of a senior center, head to his hometown of Bishop Hill so she can meet his parents for the first time. As they travel to Northern Illinois, Fred's mother Helga, suffering from Alzheimer's, strays away from her home right into the homicide of a neighbor's son.

Fred, Joan, and her college-age son Andrew are shocked by how poor Helga's short term memory is which includes not knowing where she lives or how ends up in various locales. The culprit begins harassing Helga to starting with threats over the phone. As the hamlet gets ready for Christmas, fearing for her mother-in-law more from a killer who drifts in and out of Helga's memory than Alzheimer's, Joan struggles to identify the culprit before he harms her or anyone else.

WITNESS IN BISHOP HILL is a strong Joan entry though her identification of the killer seems somewhat miraculous. The story line contains an engaging blend of elements of an amateur sleuth and to a lesser degree police procedural with Swedish Yuletide trimming to brighten up the fare. However, Sara Hoskinson Frommer's latest cozy belongs to Helga, who is handled with compassion so that Alzheimer's victims and their families (including this reviewer's beloved late mother-in-law know how much Ms. Frommer cares).

Harriet Klausner

I absolutely loved this book!
Three months after their marriage, Joan Spenser and police lieutenant Fred Lundquist are finally going to visit Fred's parents in Bishop Hill, Illinois. Not a traditional honeymoon perhaps, but after Fred's mother (an Alzheimer's sufferer) witnesses a murder, it goes completely upside down. Though it is obviously a local, Fred's mother cannot remember who the murderer was. What's worse is that the murderer does not like the idea of a living witness, so it is up to Joan and Fred to protect Helga, preferably by finding the murderer.

I must say that I absolutely loved this book! The author does an excellent job of capturing Bishop Hill and its Swedish traditions. The characters are wonderfully three-dimensional, and I think that she did a wonderful job of sympathetically portraying a family working with an Alzheimer's sufferer. Plus, the story is gripping and believable, with detectives who are human and quite believable.

Am I gushing about this book? You bet! This is a great book, and I highly recommend it to everyone.

Bishop Hill Native
In addition to being an expertly written whodunnit, I especially enjoyed the geographical description of the small Bishop Hill community and environ. Any native such as myself will easily recognize the dump, steeple building, colony school, the B&B, the Filling Station along with many other sites. The acknowledgements of helpers Lloyd and Donna Anderson, Sheriff Gib Cady and Sharon Wexell were of particular interest to me and shows the local flavor provided as the title aptly tells.