Surviving the Hurricane was Easy. Surviving the Lack of Internet? Not So Much. . .

Hello from Florida’s Big Bend, where we’ve just had an encounter with Hurricane Debby.

We were lucky at my house. We got a lot of rain, a few wind gusts, a few tree branches down, but no other damage. We didn’t even lose power, which was surprising.

But then, just as the clouds rolled away and the sun came out on Monday evening, our internet went out. Seems a big tree just up the street from us had come down, its roots unable to hold it in the sodden ground. And it brought a whole bunch of communication lines down with it, because we live in a neighborhood where all the lines are overhead, not underground.

No indication of when repairs will be completed, but we’re not expecting to have internet back today, or maybe even tomorrow.

In the meantime, I’m doing my best to find workarounds for my normal processes, most of which involve the internet. Right now I’m sitting at a nearby coffee shop — first question I asked when I walked in was, “is your internet working?” If the answer had been ‘no,’ I was prepared to go elsewhere.

So at least I have a place to prepare this newsletter even if I don’t have any earth-shaking words of wisdom for you this week.

Takeaway lesson: Revise my processes so I can keep working when the internet goes down for extended periods of time. Easier said than done…

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What I’m Reading

Murder at Cleve College by Merryn Allingham

Flora and Jack have just tied the knot, and now they’re trying to settle into married life together. But, on their way home from the wedding, they find a dead man in the lane.

Nobody even knows who he is at first, not until Flora finds a cigarette case with a note hidden inside, near where they found the body.

Meanwhile, Jack has started his job at nearby Cleve College, but things there are not all they seem. Why is the maintenance man spying on him and following him around?

This is the ninth Flora Steele mystery, and it may be Flora and Jack’s most difficult case yet.

Death in Kensington by Emily Organ

The eighth installment of the Augusta Peel series kicks off with Augusta attending a fashion show, of all things. It’s not her usual style, for sure, but her relative, Isabella, has a daughter participating and offers her a ticket.

Augusta finds herself enjoying the show more than she expected, but at the very end, one of the runway models is found by Isabella’s daughter Daphne. The victim has been strangled with her own scarf.

Daphne doesn’t understand why the police want to question her, and Isabella thinks it shouldn’t be allowed. It was her misfortune to come upon the grisly sight, after all.

Then the show’s photographer is found dead, also strangled, and two more people receive threatening messages. It takes all of Augusta’s experience and ingenuity to identify the killer.

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Notable Quotes

I’m beyond caring what you think. Your stunt with the pistol makes me think you’re one prop short of a stage set.

- Knifed in Nice by Zara Keane

I love all the little sayings indicating that somebody is inadequate. “One ant short of a picnic,” “one sandwich short of a picnic,” “one crayon short of a box,” you get the idea. This is the first time I’ve run across one that references stage sets, though, and it made me chuckle.

Outside, it was a lovely late-spring evening, the kind that often lured unwary visitors into buying old houses here.

- Death by Chocolate Malted Milkshake by Sarah Graves

I never lived in Maine, but I lived in Vermont, and I was a real estate broker there for several years. I’ve met the people she’s referring to in this quote! In the spring there was always a brief period, no more than a couple of weeks, when everything would turn a heart-stoppingly gorgeous, vivid shade of green. I would look out the picture window in my living room, or stand on my deck, and think, “so this is why they call them the Green Mountains.” They were completely magical. I always expected tourists to drop in to my office during that time, suddenly deciding they wanted to move to Vermont.

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Wise Words

Did you play last week? I’m happy to say all of you who did got the answer right. Your word choices were amiss or remiss to fill in this sentence:

“Florence is a third cousin of my father’s.” Ginger stared ahead blankly. “I’ve been _____ in not looking her up these last four years that I’ve been back in England.

- Murder at Yuletide by Lee Straus

And the answer is. . . remiss. Unlike some of the puzzles I’ve thrown your way recently, this one is straightforward with one correct answer.

“Amiss” means “in a mistaken way. “Remiss” means “showing neglect or inattention,” according to Merriam-Webster. In the sentence above, Ginger is expressing regret for being negligent toward this distant relation, so remiss.

Join us next week when we’ll look at another sentence and choose the better word choice.