Status Updates from All Editions of Understudy for Death (Hard Case Crime)

Joe is 39% done

"Listen, Mr. Hudson," Mrs. Chatham leaned forward and wet her full lips. "If all the young girls in the United States studied ballet there wouldn't be any nuns. Ballet makes a woman conscious of her body, and reminds her that it's useful."

"That's an interesting theory."

"Not a theory; plain fact. I studied ballet myself as a girl and I know what I'm talking about."

— May 11, 2020 06:35PM Add a comment

Joe is 36% done

"Newspaper readers are a morbid lot, Mrs. Chatham; they enjoy reading about death in every form. We report knifings, matricides, patricides, infanticides and suicides, and the obituary column is the most popular feature on the paper. On state-sanctioned electric chair murders we send a personal representative, and we describe all highway deaths as colorfully as possible."

— May 11, 2020 06:18PM Add a comment

Joe is 14% done

After the car pulled out of the driveway, I dropped the Venetian blinds in the living room and switched on the television set. I was going to have to make up a sex schedule of some kind--only ten days had gone by, but suppose I had let the whole month pass by? My shoulder was still sore, and burning under the bandaid. But in a way, I was grateful for the way things that worked out.

— May 07, 2020 07:58PM Add a comment

Joe is 3% done

A well-to-do Lake Springs matron, Mrs. Marion C. Huneker, 30, after leaving a farewell note addressed to her husband, Mr. Jack L. Huneker, 36, president of the local Huneker Concrete Block & Ornamental Iron Co., fatally shot her two small children and herself last night.

— May 07, 2020 07:14PM Add a comment