Ellie Harper
The mystery
The police see a cup of tea.
Ellie sees a plot.
She's spent her whole life reading how these stories end. Now she's living one, and the killer has read a few books too.
Main Street, Concord
A quiet life. A pot of tea. A visitor.
Eleanor Harper spent thirty years teaching literature at Bellingham University. Now she runs The Bookseller's Nook, a cozy little shop under timber beams on Main Street, and hosts the Gumshoe Gang: three friends who crack a classic mystery every week and know every secret in town.
Her old mentor, Professor Arthur Pearson, has been away for weeks. Tonight he finally comes back, pale and sweating, muttering about colleagues and “Jabberwockies spouting nonsense.” Ellie makes him a cup of her special tea. By the end of the evening, nothing in Concord is quite the same.
That same night
An empty house. A storm. A cat.
Someone has to feed Agatha, Arthur's imperious black cat. So Ellie lets herself into his creaking old Victorian with the key he gave her years ago. The owls are hooting, the thunder is rolling in, and the lights won't stay on.
In the morning, a crumpled scrap of paper drops out of Arthur's things. It's in his handwriting.
“Beware the Jabberwocky.”
Bellingham University
Everyone's terribly polite. Nobody's telling the truth.
Detective Thomas Hawkins has questions, and most of them are about Ellie's tea. So Ellie starts asking questions of her own. At Bellingham, Arthur's colleagues are all smiles. They also have old rivalries, a very exclusive society, and money that doesn't add up.
The deeper the Gumshoe Gang digs, the more someone wants them to stop. There's a car crawling past the shop at night. There's a man at the window. And Agatha keeps staring at things nobody else has noticed.
