Next of Kin

by Mignon G. Eberhart

Mady Smith, a wealthy young woman who is disinterested in elitist social functions, finds herself in the midst of a murder after she goes to work for ex-Senator Stuart Channing

Genres: Mystery

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1982

About the author

Mignon Good (1899-1996) was born in Lincoln, Nebraska. She studied at Nebraska Wesleyan University from 1917 to 1920. In 1923 she married Alanson C. Eberhart, a civil engineer. After working as a freelance journalist, she decided to become a full-time writer. In 1929 her first crime novel was published featuring 'Sarah Keate', a nurse and 'Lance O'Leary', a police detective. This couple appeared in another four novels. In the Forties, she and her husband divorced. She married John Hazen Perry in 1946 but two years later she divorced him and remarried her first husband. Over the next forty years she wrote a novel nearly every year. In 1971 she won the Grand Master award from the Mystery Writers of America. She also wrote many short stories featuring banker/amateur sleuth James Wickwire (who could be considered a precursor to Emma Lathen's John Putnam Thatcher) and mystery writer/amateur sleuth Susan Dare.

Reviews

[Ron Kerrigan]

I gave up about a third of the way through when I realized I didn't really want to pick it up again. You never get to know the victim, who is killed right at the beginning. I wanted to read this because it was supposedly a locked-room mystery. But one of the suspects has a key to the room, as does the cleaning staff, so it's not really that type of puzzle. Writing style was OK, but nothing much happens for 70 pages except people discussing how terrible everyone must feel about the victim being killed.

[Vintagebooklvr]

This starts off as a typical mystery of the late 1970s and early 80s, with a young woman hopelessly in love with a guy who then gets involved in a murder. But by the end there are lots of twists and went to a place I did not all expect and turns out to be far more timely than I would have thought. Some things haven't changed a whole lot in 40 years.

[Margaret]

I saw this title on a list of "Golden Age Mysteries" but it was written in the 1980s. The first third of the book is slow and repetitive. It finally picks up but I felt the solution was anticlimactic and a bit unbelievable.

[Heidi]

This was a standard, fairly enjoyable whodunit that would have merited 3 stars if it weren't for the incredibly unsatisfying, even infuriating, ending.

[Janelle]

2.5*

This was an okay locked room mystery but I found the ending very unsatisfying.

[Sean]

Typical Mignon but a change from this century.

I simply like to read books from a simpler time. It will take your mind off all the current events for a bit of a rest .

[Lynn]

Overly complicated plot. Unnecessary complications to story line.