{"id":2052,"date":"2022-05-12T15:47:58","date_gmt":"2022-05-12T15:47:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?p=2052"},"modified":"2023-04-02T23:01:42","modified_gmt":"2023-04-02T23:01:42","slug":"the-mad-mad-murders-of-marigold-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?p=2052","title":{"rendered":"The Mad, Mad Murders of Marigold Way"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Benson is best known as the first American author of continuation James Bond novels, but apart from being fictional and starring a man,<strong> this unusual and excellent read<\/strong> is the furthest thing from 007 imaginable. The story starts with an omniscient, unnamed narrator introducing readers to Lincoln Grove, Illinois, where two back-to-back streets (map included) are the setting for what the gleeful narrator describes as an updated version of Thornton Wilder\u2019s play \u201cOur Town.\u201d (Readers will also be reminded of Jim Carrey\u2019s synthetic surrounds in \u201cThe Truman Show.\u201d) Scott Hatcher is having an unusual day there, awaking to find his wife, Marie, gone. They haven\u2019t been getting along but have agreed to postpone a divorce decision because it\u2019s May 2020 and the world is in pandemic turmoil. When Scott finally reports Marie missing, it turns out that a neighbor\u2019s husband is also AWOL, a man who has recently been the subject of both Marigold Way gossip and police attention as masks, drugs and other COVID-related items have been stolen from his job. As the missing-persons investigation becomes much more, the narrator\u2019s cheerful, exclamation-point filled observations take on a sinister cast and the neighbors\u2014this takes place almost solely in one setting, just like a play\u2014all become suspect, their foibles and ambitions revealed. What a saga! As well as \u201cOur Town,\u201d readers can try this alongside M\u00e1irt\u00edn \u00d3 Cadhain\u2019s <em>The Dirty Dust: Cr\u00e9 na Cille<\/em>, which features a town\u2019s dead folks gossiping together in a graveyard<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Benson is best known as the first American author of continuation James Bond novels, but apart from being fictional and starring a man, this unusual and excellent read is the&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":2051,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[55,112,164],"class_list":["post-2052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review","tag-mystery-detective","tag-satire","tag-star"],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/formidable\/4\/Mad-Mad-Murders-400x400.jpg","featured_image_src_square":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/formidable\/4\/Mad-Mad-Murders-400x600.jpg","author_info":{"display_name":"Henrietta Thornton","author_link":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?author=4"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2052"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2052\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}