A group of Christie buffs. . .In honor of Agatha Christie's one hundredth birthday, mystery bookstore owner Annie Laurance Darling plans a week-long celebration of mystery, treasure hunts, title clues, and Christie trivia. Yet even as the champagne is chilling and the happy guests begin arriving on Broward's Rock Island, Annie feels a niggling sense of doom. But the last thing she or her guests expect is that the scheduled fun and mayhem will include a real-life murder. The unexpected arrival of Neil Bledsoe, the most despised book critic in America, was sure to raise a few hackles. An advocate of hard-boiled detection and gory true crime, Bledsoe drops a bombshell on the devoted Christie assemblage: He's penning a scurrilous biography of the grand dame of suspense herself. Before the first title clue is solved, no less than two attempts are made on Bledsoe's life. Now Annie and her unflappable husband, Max Darling, find themselves trying to stop a murder in the making-only the first corpse isn't the one they're expecting. . .and it isn't the last. From the Paperback edition. YA-- Annie and Max Darling, sleuths and owners of the Death on Demand bookstore, are at it again. This time a week-long Agatha Christie conference has been organized by Annie and her co-sponsor, Lady Gwendolyn Tompkins. They have arranged for speeches, movies, discussions, a dress ball, contests, and teas. And then Neil Bledsoe, a book critic, shows up uninvited. He is despised by a great many people at the conference, and Annie suspects trouble may occur, which it does almost immediately. After a couple of murders, the conference seems to be falling apart. The contest involves matching clues with posters to find some Christie book titles, and her many followers will want to join in to solve the puzzle as well as the murders. Answers are in the back of the book. Murder mystery fans will find this an exciting read, especially if they have read Agatha Christie. It's a good story even if they haven't. --Dorothy Addison, Woodlawn School, Fairfax County, VA Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. An elaborately plotted homage to Agatha Christie--once again featuring Annie Darling (Deadly Valentine, etc.), owner of the Death on Demand mystery bookstore on South Carolina's Browards Rock Island. Annie has spent months planning a centennial celebration of Christie's birth--an event to be attended by writers, fans, and critics, and headed by England's top crime writer, Lady Gwendolyn Tompkins. An unwelcome guest is Neil Bledsoe--an all-around hateful critic-magazine publisher--accompanied now by aunt Kathryn Honeycutt, a dead ringer for Miss Marple. Bledsoe is credited with a number of suicides and ruined careers. Attendees Victoria Shaw and Derek Shaw are two victims of his malice. There are others present--and it'll soon become apparent that one of them is after Bledsoe, even before he noisily promises to slander Christie in a new book. Surviving attacks by shooting and a vase dropped from a height, Bledsoe finally gets his, but not before the deaths of two seemingly innocent bystanders. All of this explored, in excruciatingly drawn-out detail, by Annie and a clutch of would-be detectives headed by Lady Gwendolyn, along with Police Chief Saulter. Meanwhile, the author's knowledge of the genre is ever-- and irritatingly--on show. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. hristie buffs. . .In honor of Agatha Christie's one hundredth birthday, mystery bookstore owner Annie Laurance Darling plans a week-long celebration of mystery, treasure hunts, title clues, and Christie trivia. Yet even as the champagne is chilling and the happy guests begin arriving on Broward's Rock Island, Annie feels a niggling sense of doom. But the last thing she or her guests expect is that the scheduled fun and mayhem will include a real-life murder. The unexpected arrival of Neil Bledsoe, the most despised book critic in America, was sure to raise a few hackles. An advocate of hard-boiled detection and gory true crime, Bledsoe drops a bombshell on the devoted Christie assemblage: He's penning a scurrilous biography of the grand dame of suspense herself. Before the first title clue is solved, no less than two attempts are made on Bledsoe's life. Now Annie and her unflappable husband, Max Darling, find themselves trying to stop a murder in the making-only the first corpse isn't the one they're mystery cozy Amateur Sleuths