Product Description

Ninth in the Agatha Award-winning series that's been hailed as engrossing, Steps to the Altar finds California folk art expert Benni Harper preparing for two upcoming weddings, digging up clues to a decades-old unsolved murder-and struggling with a very personal crisis of the heart...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #128123 in Books
• Published on: 2003-04-01
• Released on: 2003-04-01
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

From Publishers Weekly
In a story sewn together as tightly as a traditional quilt, Agatha Award-winner Fowler delivers superior cozy entertainment in her ninth Benni Harper mystery (after 2001's Arkansas Traveler). In the California coastal town of San Celina, there are weddings and wished-for weddings, plus the threatened demise of Benni's two-year marriage to police chief Gabe Ortiz, brought about by the appearance of Gabe's former female partner, Del Hernandez. Just as Benni doesn't think she can keep one more plate spinning in her busy life, two crises crop up: first, Del starts deliberately going after Gabe and lets Benni know it; second, Benni is asked to inventory four trunks full of materials possibly related to the decades-old bludgeoning death of wealthy Garvey Sullivan. Though asked only to catalogue the items, Benni becomes fascinated by the potential murder charge against Maple Sullivan, Garvey's widow. Maple fled before her husband's body was found, but she's been found "guilty" in the town's conscience and gossip ever since. Will Benni solve the old murder? Will her marriage survive the lust of Del Hernandez and the come-ons to herself from an acerbic sheriff's deputy? Will her best friend, cousin and grandmother all make it to their respective altars, fulfilling the prophecy of the Steps to the Altar quilt made for one couple? The answers to these questions make delicious reading, with plenty of passion, snappy dialogue and a whiz-bang plot.

Customer Reviews

Soap Opera, not Mystery
This is my first and last Earlene Fowler mystery. It read like a soap opera. Halfway through the book and still nothing but the mention of an old trunk and a 50 year old murder. I'm not going to bother finishing it. If I want a drama I'll choose one, but when I want a mystery I want clues, bodies, detecting, not a story about the main character dealing with her husband's affair!

The mysterious and baffling human heart
Benni Harper is involved with two fast-approaching weddings. Her best friend is marrying her favorite cousin, and her headstrong grandmother Dove is marrying again after decades of widowhood. Also, she's managing an arts festival, and she and husband Gabe Ortiz are buying a home and moving.

Though her plate is full, she's asked - and agrees - to catalog four trunks of possessions left behind by a local woman who disappeared in the 1940's at the time her husband's body was found. Everyone assumed she shot him and absconded with his best friend; nobody's heard anything from or of either of them since that day. Benni's not satisfied with that assumption. She wants to know what really happened. With some unwelcome help from a local sheriff's deputy, she starts reading the woman's diaries and other writings and asking questions.

This distracts her from serious emotional pain. She learns that way back when he was a cop in LA, Gabe's undercover assignment partner was a sexy woman with whom he had a long-running affair that broke up his first marriage. Now Del, that former partner, is in town and making serious moves on Gabe. Who can't seem to tell her to get lost.

This book is short on traditional mystery and detection. Instead, it explores dilemmas of the human heart: love, marriage, lust, trust. There are graceful passages glowing with insight. And not a little suspense, as characters teeter on the brink of destructive actions.

Benni resolves the 50-year-old mystery, which resonates with the issues wrenching her heart in the present. Altogether, Steps to the Altar is a much deeper and more thoughtful read than the average cozy mystery.

5 stars and 2 thumbs way, way up!
This is the first Benni Harper/Earlene Fowler book I've read and it won't be my last. Boy can Ms. Fowler write a page-turner! I was almost crying through 1/3 of the book. Her characters are so achingly real and you just felt for Benni. The mystery was good, too. I didn't quite have it figured out but I did have an idea. But it turned out even better than I expected. Gabe and Benni are wonderful together and I thought they really deserved some happiness. Everyone who loves mysteries/small towns/realistic situations/bold humor and good books should read this moving novel!