Miss Lizzie

By Walter Satterthwait

A girl's stepmother is murdered, and only Lizzie Borden can find the killer .

During the summer of 1921, a strange spinster rents the seaside cottage next door to Amanda Burton and her family. The new neighbor dresses in black, does card tricks, and reminisces about a long-ago trip to Paris. Her name is Lizzie Borden, and two decades earlier she was acquitted of one of the most notorious crimes in American history. Although her stepmother warns her to stay away, Amanda has no patience for her father's doughy wife, and befriends their infamous neighbor. When tragedy strikes the seaside town, Miss Lizzie is the only one who can help.

Amanda finds her stepmother hacked to pieces in her blood-soaked bed. The police suspect Miss Borden, but Amanda knows her new friend is innocent. As the township closes ranks, Miss Lizzie and Amanda hunt for the real killer. Guilty or innocent, Lizzie Borden does not go down without a fight.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Head of Zeus
• Release date: Jun 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781784088385

Walter Satterthwait

Walter Satterthwait (b. 1946) is an author of mysteries and historical fiction. A fan of mystery novels from a young age, he spent high school immersed in the works of Dashiell Hammett and Mickey Spillane. While working as a bartender in New York in the late 1970s, he wrote his first book: an adventure novel, Cocaine Blues (1979), about a drug dealer on the run from a pair of killers.

Reviews for Miss Lizzie

[seriousgrace · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Everyone remembers the rhyme about Lizzie Borden giving her parents a certain number of whacks. Everyone also knows she was found not guilty. But! She wasn't found innocent either. So what happens when, thirty years later, another parent is found murdered in the exact same way and Lizzie just happens to be the neighbor living right next door? Coincidence? Amanda Burden is a teenager of thirteen and has befriended Miss Borden who has lived alone all this time. This is Amanda's story.Satterthwait keeps the tension tight in this clever whodunit. Amanda believes in Miss Lizzie's innocence and yet Satterthwait is careful to leave a little room for doubt.There were several things I found unusual about this plot. For starters, Amanda is, as I said, only thirteen years old and yet her father leaves Amanda with Miss Lizzie while he conducts business (and an affair) in Boston. Amanda has been keeping her friendship with Miss Lizzie a secret, so how or why would Mr. Burden trust his only daughter to the care of a woman who may or may not have murdered her parents? I don't think it ruins the plot to say that I was even further confused when it was revealed Amanda's father left his daughter to be the one to discover her stepmother's body hacked to death.

[scot2-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Really enjoyed this book. Well written and amusing in places even though the murder was rather horrific.

[cathyskye · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

First Line: The days were longer then, in that long-ago summer at the shore, and the air was softer, and the sunlight more golden as it winked and wobbled off a bluer sea.It is 1921 and Prohibition has just begun. Thirteen-year-old Amanda Burton is staying with her father, stepmother and older brother in a house along the Massachusetts coast.Amanda finds out their next-door neighbor is the notorious Lizzie Borden, the woman who was acquitted of taking a hatchet and cutting her father and stepmother to pieces. Amanda meets Lizzie, and they become friends-- meeting almost every day so Lizzie can teach the young girl card tricks.Amanda and her brother loathe their stepmother, and when Amanda wakes up on the hottest day of the summer to find the woman hacked to bits in a bedroom in their house, suspicion falls squarely on the shoulders of neighbor Lizzie. Amanda doesn't believe that Lizzie did it (she doesn't believe Lizzie killed her parents either), and with Miss Lizzie taking the initiative to hire both a lawyer and a Pinkerton detective, the unlikely pair sets out to find the real killer. Their investigation uncovers a nest of secrets. All they have to do is find the guardian who's willing to kill to keep his--or her-- secrets hidden.Satterthwait's writing style captured me from the first paragraph, and another scene set in the fog actually had the hair standing on the back of my neck. The story is told by a much older Amanda who seems very nostalgic for the innocence she had during those days. As the story progresses and suspicion shifts from one person to another, the reader can easily begin to doubt all the characters-- even Amanda herself.Satterthwait's poetic style brings the era to life in a swiftly moving plot that shifts nimbly through the fog of secrets and suspicions until the reader is deliciously lost. Amanda and Miss Lizzie are now one of my favorite detective duos, and I have more of the author's books on their way to my doorstep.