That’s at the Manchester Public Library in Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts.
Natives call it MBTS or mostly just “Manchester.”
[This page updated 9/29/24]
Next Meeting: Friday October 25, 10:30 am
Meeting Location: Inside the library AND via Zoom (Hybrid Meeting)
Zoom details will be provided via email. Be sure to subscribe to our meeting notices so that you can be updated with any last minute changes in location – and other club news.
Read Devil’s Corner by Lisa Scottoline (2005) for the October 25 Meeting. A young federal prosecutor in Philadelphia risks her life to bring down the kingpin of a conspiracy responsible for murders in West Philly.
Blurb for This Month’s Book
New York Times bestselling author Lisa Scottoline is best known for her 17 book series featuring Rosato & Associates, an all-women law firm in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Devil’s Corner is different; it is a standalone (non-series) book, also a legal thriller, but instead features a young federal prosecutor.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Vicki Allegretti goes to meet a confidential informant and finds herself facing a loaded 9 mm Glock semiautomatic weapon, wielded by a panicky teenager. Violence is the last thing this neophyte lawyer expects. The case is easy, the kind given to new ADAs to help them cut their teeth. Yet almost before she has time to react, her partner is shot dead in the chest, her informant is dead, and Vickie barely escapes with her life.
Stunned and heartbroken, Vicki tries to figure out how a routine meeting on a minor case became a double homicide. Then she sets out to see justice done. She can identify the killers – now all she has to do is find them.
Vicki’s suspicions take her to the depths of the federal detention center’s “bowl,” to the posh suburbs where her parents now live, to a row house on the street where she grew up, and Devil’s Corner, a city neighborhood teetering on the brink of ruin – thick with broken souls, innocent youth, and a scourge that preys on both. But the deeper Vicki probes, the more she becomes convinced that the murders weren’t random and the killers were more ruthless than she thought.
When another murder thrusts Vicki together with an unlikely ally, she buckles up for a wild ride into the cross-hairs of a conspiracy as powerful as it is relentless.
This Book Fits Within These Types [Sub-Genres] of Crime Fiction:
Legal Thriller
Praise for Devil’s Corner
“Scottoline is a star….Devil’s Corner is a fast-paced thriller featuring a female lawyer with an ample supply of attitude….The writing is brisk and sassy, right at the intersection of the law genre and women’s fiction. Vicki and Reheema make a sharp, urban Thelma and Louise. The story swings from the gritty to the grand.”
– Time
“Expertly crafted.”
– People
“Among the more captivating aspects of Lisa Scottoline’s mysteries are the female characters she creates: smart, funny, flawed, and so real they could be your girlfriends or neighbors….[Her] new heroine is a welcome addition to the family.”
– Philadelphia Inquirer
“She grabs you instantly….It’s thrilling, but also fun, peppered with Scottoline’s tart, cheeky wit….Scottoline just keeps getting better and better.”
– Chicago Tribune
Setting of the Book
Philadelphia.
We invite you to read the book and join us in discussing it on Friday, October 25!
About the Author!
Born in the Lower Moyamensing neighborhood of Philadelphia in 1955, Scottoline attended Lower Merion High School and then went on to earn a B.A. in English magna cum laude (in three years) from the University of Pennsylvania, then graduated cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
She clerked for judges at the state and federal appellate courts and later became a litigator at Dechert in Philadelphia.
After the birth of her daughter, who she raised while a single Mom, she left the law firm and started writing. Her first book, Everywhere That Mary Went (1993) was nominated for the Edgar Award. Her second book, Final Appeal, received an Edgar Award, for excellence in crime fiction. She has since written 30+ novels, and has 30 million copies in print, including translated novels into 30 languages.
Lisa’s books have solidly landed on all the major bestseller lists including The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, Publisher’s Weekly, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times.
She has served as President of the Mystery Writers of America and won many other honors.
Since March 2007, Scottoline and her daughter Francesca Serritella have been writing the “Chick Wit” column for The Philadelphia Inquirer. A collection of those humorous nonfiction columns has been published in a series of bestselling books co-written with her daughter Francesca Serritella, the first of which is entitled Why My Third Husband Will Be A Dog: The Amazing Adventures of an Ordinary Woman and published on November 24, 2009. Sample her “Chick Wit” columns here.
Lisa is also a regular softie when it comes to her animal family. Nothing can turn Lisa from a professional, career-minded author, to a mushy, sweet-talking, ball-throwing woman like her beloved dogs. Although she has owned and loves various dog breeds, including her amazing goldens, she has gone crazy for her collection of King Charles Spaniels. But she loves more than dogs. See her pets’ photos here.
She has many fans, and she has regular contact through her newsletters, social media, and events.
For an expanded version of her bio, read her “About” page on her web site.
LIST OF ALL OF HER BOOKS
The best list is organized by series (and non-series) on her website here. [In this rare case, it is better than the StopYoureKillingMe website because it is more up to date and because it includes her non-mysteries (if you are interested) – the Chick Wit material and more recently historical fiction.]
VIDEO INTERVIEW
If you search within YouTube for “Lisa Scottoline,” you will find many interviews. But I have chosen one of the older ones, done with the highly respected Barbara Peters of the Poisoned Pen Bookstore (Scottsdale, AZ) back in 2007. This gives you insight into Lisa Scottoline closer to the time Devil’s Corner was published in 2005. Unfortunately, the video quality is not the best and for some reason they divided the roughly 28 minute interview into 3 separate parts. Nevertheless, here are the 3 parts:
About Our Mystery Book Group
DO YOU LIKE MYSTERY BOOKS? We welcome your participation with us. Our monthly Friday meetings focus on the mystery book of the month. The group helps to create the annual reading list each June. (Click to see this year’s book list.) When we gather, we enjoy each other and the varying views that each person shares, recognizing that there are many genres and tastes in mystery books, crime books, thrillers, etc. It’s just fun!
WANT MORE TO READ AND DISCUSS, MORE THAN ONE BOOK A MONTH? In addition to our regular end of the month meeting, we often have one or more “sub-groups” that are ongoing, reading through a series of books by one author.
AND THERE’S MORE! As we like to say, “We are more than a book club.” For example:
- Authors as a guest for Q&A, most recently– Bruce Robert Coffin in June of 2023 and Daniel Palmer in November 2022,
- A recent Gloucester Harbor cruise on the Ardelle. An annual June backyard picnic,
- Field trip to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (it started with a book we read in which the museum’s famous heist was featured),
- Two Spenser Tours of Boston based on the Robert Parker books,
- Outings to movies like – Mr Holmes, Murder on the Orient Express, and Knives Out.
- Field trip to the Poe Statue in Boston,
- Lunch at the Agawam Diner,
- A Transcendental Murder mystery book field trip to Concord, MA.
- Frequent local restaurant luncheons following the regular book club meeting
- No agenda Zoom Lunch hour socials – a fill-in idea during the Pandemic
Click here for ongoing Mystery Book Club resources and helps. Quick link to current list of books for the year (September through August).
A few pictures from a recent meeting (8/30/24) during “announcements” part of the meeting. Thanks to Audrey Carmen (Library Staff)….
A few pictures from an early summer meeting (6/26/24) during “announcements” part of the meeting. Thanks to Carol McKenna….
Our special speaker for Nov 18, 2022: D.J. Palmer – author of various kinds of thrillers (5th from left)
Our club outing on Gloucester Harbor Tours’ Lighthouse Cruise – Saturday August 20, 2022: below – Selena and Mike seated (picture by Leslie)
Our club outing on Gloucester Harbor on the Schooner Ardelle charter – August 25, 2021: below
