Busy Bodies by Joan Hess – A Claire Malloy Mystery
Copyright 1995
ISBN 0-525-93910-5

Leave it to Claire Malloy, owner of the Book Depot in Farberville, to start out having tea with retired schoolteacher Miss Emily Parchester and end up investigating a murder. An avant-garde artist who moved into a house on Willow Street has the whole neighborhood up in arms. His “interactive art”, complete with a nearly nude model and a coffin in the front yard, is attracting a mob of noisy gawkers.

Irate residents are worried about declining property values. The local mystery writer cannot meet her deadlines with the constant clatter. And when the artist’s estranged wife rolls up in a limo and announces to one and all that she intends  to have him committed to a mental institution, all of Farberville is in a dither.

But before the night is out, even stranger things happen: the volatile artist’s house goes up in smoke, a dead body is found inside the coffin, the artist is promptly arrested for murder… and Clarie Malloy, devoted amateur sleuth that she is, starts snooping where she doesn’t belong.

While local residents, including handsome police detective Peter Rosen, are ready to believe the crazy artist is capable of anything. Claire and Miss Parchester are convinced that, thought he had the motive and the opportunity, he lacks the necessary evil to have done the deed. Claire fully intends to exercise her right of creative expression by being the busybody who find the real killer.