The Body in the Casket: A Faith Fairchild Mystery

Written by Katherine Hall Page

Narrated by Tanya Eby

Even though resourceful caterer Faith Fairchild has called the sleepy Massachusetts village of Aleford home for most of her adult life, she isn't familiar with Havencrest, a privileged enclave, until the owner of Rowan House calls her about catering a weekend house party.

While discussing the lavish party he's planning for his seventieth birthday, Max Dane-the legendary Broadway musical producer/director-makes a startling confession: "I didn't hire you for your cooking skills, fine as they may be, but for your sleuthing ability. You see, one of the guests wants to kill me."

Faith's only clue is an ominous birthday gift he received the week before-an empty casket sent anonymously containing a twenty-year-old playbill from his last production, Heaven or Hell. Consequently, he has drawn his guest list for the party from its cast and crew, so Faith will have to keep one eye on the menu and the other on her host to prevent his birthday bash from becoming his final curtain.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dreamscape Media Audio
• Release date: Dec 5, 2017
• ISBN: 9781520087474

Katherine Hall Page

Katherine Hall Page is the author of twenty-five previous Faith Fairchild mysteries, the first of which received the Agatha Award for best first mystery. The Body in the Snowdrift was honored with the Agatha Award for best novel of 2006. Page also won an Agatha for her short story “The Would-Be Widower.” The recipient of the Malice Domestic Award for Lifetime Achievement, she has been nominated for the Edgar, the Mary Higgins Clark, the Maine Literary, and the Macavity awards. She lives in Massachusetts and Maine with her husband.

Reviews for The Body in the Casket

[tatoosh-3 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

“The Body in the Casket” is a slow-paced exploration of small-town life in suburban Boston. Marketed as a murder mystery, the primary focus is on women’s fashions, recipes, and relationships. Page establishes the central premise at the outset. Max Dane, a wealthy but disliked recluse, is throwing a birthday party for himself. Now retired for 20 years, he is inviting the most important members of his last theater production. It had a short run and is generally regarded as a failure. He expects someone to attempt to kill him during the party, and he hires Faith Fairchild, a local caterer, and amateur sleuth, to prepare the food for the party and to determine the identity of the person intending to murder him. Page then turns her attention elsewhere and treats the party and potential murder as an unimportant subplot. It turns out that Faith has a lot of friends and they all wear nice clothes. Scene after scene involves a detailed, designer name-dropping description of what the women are wearing. Intriguing recipes also figure prominently, ostensibly to decide what to prepare for the party, but more likely to impress upon readers that Faith (and Page) have broad knowledge, exquisite taste, and sound judgment. Page interrupts her focus on clothing and recipes with brief introductions of each person invited to the party. For some unexplained reason, all of their careers were irreparably damaged by their involvement in the failed theater production ant that is their motive for murder. Sadly, the supposed damage to their careers is too extreme and uniformly crushing to be believed. The premise is so implausible that Page is forced to fall back on, “Jinxed,” as an explanation. Consequently, the suspects are equally (im)plausible.Several other subplots also derail the main story. Samantha, the daughter of Faith’s closest friend (Pix), is fired from her job and dumped by her boyfriend. Pix’s mother, Ursala, has a new gentleman friend staying with her and the women become concerned about his intentions. Developers want to buy the old Grayson House bordering the village green and develop a strip mall. Things are abuzz in small-town suburban Boston. As if all this were not enough, the book fails as a murder mystery. I was able to deduce the murderer half-way through the book because all of the principal characters had the same unconvincing motive except one. I kept looking for clues regarding the murderer’s motivation, but Page forgot to include any.I’m not sure of the intended reader, but it must be someone who is fascinated by details of small-town life and not troubled by a slow pace, an implausible premise, a focus on clothing and recipes, and a group of women who are all candidates for sainthood. Apparently, that audience is large though; this is the 24th Faith Fairchild Mystery.

[lindapanzo · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Yet another solid entry in the long-running Faith Fairchild cozy mystery series. I've read these out of order and really ought to start the series at the beginning. Recommended to cozy fans.

[dd196406 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Really enjoyed this book! I love this series and this book was one of the best in the series. The setting was mostly dark, with a gothic mansion in the woods experiences in winter in Massachusetts. There were creepy elements and I wasn't sure about the identity of the villain until the very end. Made for an interesting read. And, as always, loved the food descriptions and recipes. Highly recommended!

[mtbearded1_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This was not the first Faith Fairchild mystery I have read, nor will it be the last. The series includes over twenty titles centered on the caterer and minister's wife, Faith Fairchild, who seems to be quite adept at finding herself in dangerous situations. In the latest volume, she has been chosen to cater a birthday weekend specifically because of her reputation as an amateur sleuth. I have to admit that I do not know the Boston suburbs, so I can only assume that the local color is accurate, but the location is relatively minor. The story could be set in any metropolitan suburb and not be diminished. I do know something about living with a minister, being the son of one and having grown up in parsonages, and that part of the story is very accurate, in my experience. With a good share of unlikable characters, The Body in the Casket is reminiscent of both a good Agatha Christie novel or the board game Clue, and for me, at least, the villain, when finally revealed, was a complete surprise. Easy, enjoyable reading, good characterisation, and a compelling story line (actually several story lines interwoven), how could I not enjoy and recommend this book. And as the protagonist is a caterer, there are even recipes that tempt. Highly recommended.

[thornton37814 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A former Broadway producer asks Faith to cater a birthday celebration at his home over a weekend. He's invited those persons connected with his last play, Heaven and Hell. He chose Faith because of her sleuthing reputation. One of the persons invited seeks to kill him and sent him a casket to emphasize the point. At the same time, Pix's daughter investigates the man dating her grandmother Ursula. A developer wants to raze a historic home, but many in the town want the historic, but not registered, home preserved. Tom's position on the town council puts him in the midst of that controversy. Most of Faith's sleuthing is done before the guests arrive although the opportunity to observe guests adds some insight. No body is found until near the end of the novel, and contrary to the book's title, it was not found in a casket. I fingered the guilty person early in the novel. It surprised me Faith was so quick to accept her initial explanation of the body and never considered other options until her life was endangered. This is an enjoyable, although imperfect, installment. The novel's plot probably serves as much to set the scene for future installments as it does a mystery. It's a twist on a locked room mystery except the murder has not yet taken place. At various times in the novel, the author compares the scenario to Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express and the classic board game Clue. Comments are based on an advance reader's copy provided by the publisher through LibraryThing Early Reviewers with the expectation of an honest review.

[bah195 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Katherine Hall Page's new book, The Body In The Casket, was a very fast read. I've read some of her other books in this series and enjoyed them. Unfortunately this one was a disappointment. Not including the recipes and authors note at the back, this story is 227 pages long. Of that number only 81 pages was devoted just to the mystery. The rest was about the main character Faith Fairchild and her family, friends and business.I wish the author would have switched things around and expanded on the mystery and gave us less about Faith's life.

[drled_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Synopsis: Max Dane, a producer/director of some renown, is having a birthday. He's also living in an enclave near Aleford so it isn't outside the realm of possibilities that he'd hire Faith to cater his birthday celebration. What Faith finds is that someone is threatening Max and she is expected to find out who before he or she makes good on the threat. Review: While the plot focuses on who wants to kill Max Dane and plenty of clues are dropped to lead to who is going to do it, there are several interesting side stories about the 'usual suspects'. I was happy with the plot, the progression of the story, the side stories, and then there was the ending. It dropped me flat with the thinnest of explanations. I was really disappointed.

[owlie13 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

First foray into this series, and I probably won't seek out any more. Another mystery series involving recipes and a caterer (I'm more familiar with Diane Mott Davidson's Goldy Bear series.) The setting was a little interesting - very small town where the size of the town and the weather plays a role. The setting involves a birthday party where all the invitees have reason to hate the birthday celebrant. There are some deaths which occur before the party itself, and there was uncertainty (at least to me) whether or not those deaths were relevant. The body referred to in the title most definitely is, but honestly, I found the whole story rather flat. Perhaps because I didn't have the history of the 23 (twenty-three!) preceding novels in the series, but I didn't really care about any of the characters. I thought the ending was somewhat flat, which I had to read twice before I saw any motivation. All in all, it was an OK way to spend a few hours, but not an author I will be seeking out.

[cherylk_44 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This is a nice, cozy mystery book. So fans of this type of genre will enjoy this book. I read this book within a day. So it is a fast read. Yet, sadly, my problem with the book was that I did not connect that much with the characters. Thus I was not fully invested in the story and what was transpiring. For me the story was not memorable. This is largely due to the fact that I could not connect with the characters ad it was not because I had not read the prior novels. As this book can be read as a stand alone novel. Although, I will give this book props as it did have hints of the board game Clue. I think any mystery fan enjoyed playing Clue. So, this aspect of the story was nice. It just would have been grander if the eccentric level of mystery within the story and characters had been pumped up higher. Which, for me than this book would have stood out more. While, this book may not have worked for me, it does not mean that it will not be an enjoyment for other readers.

[bidwell9glaze · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I love the Faith Fairchild mysteries, and although I loved the stories about what is happening to her children and her friends, I had trouble with the mytstery itself. Cozy mysteries expect you to suspend your disbelief, the suspension on my disbelief was sprung. The whole premise, of a party based on clue with a basis in the game, Clue, seemed contrived to the extreme. I also, for the first time in a long time of reading these mysteries, was not surprised, at all, by the discovery of the real perpetrator, only surprised that the originally threatened person didn't see it, and the one death at the party. Even the death before the party was explained, explicitly, in the dialog in the book. The storytelling was fine indeed. It was the mystery that I found less than enthralling.

[marsap_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Faith Fairchild returns cooking, catering and sleuthing. This time Faith has been hired by producer/director of hit Broadway musicals, Max Dane—to “produced” a party to celebrate his 70th birthday. The food is to be inspired by his last and only failed production based on Heaven and Hell. While planning the party Faith learns that Max has hired her not "for your cooking skills, fine as they may be, but for your sleuthing ability. You see, one of the guests wants to kill me." The people that he has invited were those involved in his one failure—which affected each one of the participants in a negative way. Faith’s only clue is that Max received a frightening birthday gift the week before—an empty casket containing a 21 year old Playbill from the failed production. I enjoyed this latest of the Faith Fairchild series more than the last one-- Body in the Pines (the last one had so little of Faith that I really found that I missed her and it effected my enjoyment of the book). Some of the subplots of this newest one I could have done without (they seemed a little forced), but I enjoyed fun recipes, the “Agatha Christie” atmosphere (all the suspects in a grand mansion), and fun plot. 3 ½ out of 5 stars.

[brangwinn · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

What I liked about this mystery is its like Agatha Christie mysteries and it’s got great elements of the board game, Clue. And of course, having a chef as the detective is always fun because there will be great descriptions of food.

[drebbles · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Winters in Massachusetts can mean slow business for Faith Fairchild's catering company but even if business wasn’t slow she still would have been tempted to accept Max Dane’s offer to cater his seventieth birthday party. Not only was Max a producer of hit Broadway plays, he has invited the cast of his last play – a huge flop which ruined the careers of just about all involved - to the party. Oh and he claims that one of them wants to kill him and he wants Faith to investigate! Will Faith track down the killer or will this party be Max’s last act?Several years ago I read a few of Katherine Hall Page’s Faith Fairchild books and then stopped reading them for some reason. I have recently started reading the series again but can't really compare “The Body in the Casket” to any of the other Faith Fairchild books. Having said that, for the most part I enjoyed this book. I loved the descriptions of what was going on in Faith's family and also the family of her friends - by the time the book was over I felt like I really knew and cared about these characters and what was happening in their lives. In fact, I got so caught up in the characters and their lives that it took me awhile to realize how slight the mystery was. It had a great premise, a great setup, some clever moments and then it kind of fizzled out - the main events didn't even happen until near the end of the book. Even those main events were a bit of a letdown. I will say that I was completely surprised when the identity of the bad guy was revealed - well done by Katherine Hall Page.While I felt the mystery was a bit disappointing, I enjoyed the characters and setting of “The Body in the Casket” and will be reading more of the books in the Series.

[newsieq · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

New England caterer Faith Fairchild is hired by a famed Broadway mogul for his 70th birthday party … and more. Max Dane wants her to use her sleuthing skills to figure out who wants to kill him, after someone sends him a casket and implies that Max will be needing it. The invitation list to the no-expenses-spared bash include actors and others involved with the musical “Heaven or Hell,” which failed spectacularly and sent all their careers into a tailspin. Meanwhile, two young people close to Faith – her son Ben and her friend Pix’s daughter Samantha – have their hearts broken and there’s nothing anyone can do to help. Plus Pix’s elderly mother seems to be under the spell of an aging Lothario. As the main plot unfolds, the subplots play in the background. I’ve been reading this series from the very beginning – and am impressed that the author has kept up the quality – and maintained reader interest --for 24 books! Katherine Hall Page is a wonderful author, and this book is her best yet. Anyone who enjoys reading cozy mysteries will love The Body in the Casket. Recipes included.Review based on publisher-provided ARC.

[aardvark2_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Really good—possibly her best. A good mix of mystery story and domestic dilemmas. Faith Fairchild is hired by famous Broadway producer Max Dane to cater a weekend birthday party at his country mansion. Dane has hired her not so much for her cooking as for her sleuthing abilities, as he is convinced that one of his invited guests intends to kill him--a casket has been anonymously sent to him prior to the weekend. The invited guests were all connected with his last long-ago production, which failed and damaged the careers of most of them.Faith Fairchild is also dealing with domestic issues: her son has been dumped by his girlfriend, her husband is trying to prevent the construction of a strip mall in town, and her neighbor Pix’s daughter has moved home after losing her job and boyfriend on the same day. And Pix’s mother, Ursula, has a mystery man enter her life.There are luscious descriptions of food throughout, with a few included recipes at the end. All of her books have an Author’s Note at the end, and this one talks about her childhood exposure to Broadway plays. She seems to really know her subject, or has researched thoroughly, as the show biz bits seem detailed and authentic.