Wright, Sally

Pride and Predator (Ben Reese Mysteries (Ballantine))

It would have been a perfect crime if one small boy on Holly Island hadn't snuck out at dawn to play at the food of Lindisfarne Castle and stumbled on Jon MacLean's body. If he hadn't prevented the murderer from retrieving one clue, no one would have questioned the minister's death, not even Lord Alex Chisholm, in his castle in the Scottish Highlands. Then he wouldn't have asked Ben Reese, an American archivist and ex-WWII Scout, to investigate Jon's death, and Ben would have faced death himself while trying to keep her murderer from killing again. Pride and Predator is the second, suspense-filled novel in the Ben Reese Mystery Series.

Out of the Ruins

THE WILD AND BEAUTIFUL SEA ISLAND WAS A PLACE TO DIE FOR.
AND KILL FOR.

Of all the aristocratic dynasties that once reigned over Georgia’s Cumberland Island, only the Hill family survives. Now they too are threatened. Charlotte, the family matriarch, has died suddenly and mysteriously, leaving her sister-in-law, Hannah, to protect the unspoiled paradise Charlotte had so passionately loved. But Hannah’s own health is precarious, developers are closing in, and the younger generation—charming cousins Mary, Leah, and Johanna—don’t seem to share the family devotion to the land. Even the island folk, some as venomous as Cumberland diamondbacks, are closely watching Hannah’s struggle to breathe. Looks like all eyes are on the Hill house. And someone covets what they see.

Archivist and family friend Ben Reese knows, however, that appearances can be deceiving. And murder can seem so easy and so right when it gets you what you desperately crave.

Publish and Perish

The Ivory Tower of academia may look serene from the outside, but inside it's a snakepit. At least according to Sally S. Wright in her wickedly pointed campus mystery, Publish or Perish. The victim here is Richard West, head of the English Department at a tony private college in Ohio and keeper of an academic ethic that belonged to an earlier age. The sleuth is Professor Ben Reese, a smart historian with a nose for crime. After reading Publish or Perish readers may see beneath the staid surface of university life, suspecting page-turning stories hidden from the untutored eye.

INTRODUCING ACADEMIC SLEUTH BEN REESE

A college professor dead under mysterious circumstances. A secretary who hates the victim with lethal ferocity. A vengeful former student. To university archivist and former intelligence agent Ben Reese, the sudden death of his old friend and colleague Richard West, Chair of the English Department, looks like murder, but in a small buttoned-down private college, can it ever be proved? Not until an attack on his own life tells Ben all he needs--and fears--to know about a brilliant, sociopathic killer. . . .

Pursuit and Persuasion: A Ben Reese Mystery (Wright, Sally S. Ben Reese Mystery Series, 3,)

If you feared that you were going to be killed and had a good idea who it might be, would you leave a cryptic note asking a friend to investigate even the most natural-appearing death if it happened--and not name your suspect? That's the premise of this pleasant third entry in Sally Wright's Ben Reese series (Publish and Perish, Pride and Predator) and unlikely as it may be, she makes do with it more than adequately.

Georgina Fletcher is a Scottish academic, a sensible woman troubled in the weeks before her seemingly natural death by knowledge of some unpleasantness in her family's history and a strong desire to make amends for the misdeeds of her forbears. When a former student of American archivist Ben Reese inherits Georgina's estate, she asks him to help her solve the professor's mystery so that she can carry out Georgina's wishes. Ben's investigation turns up several likely suspects in Georgina's demise, and the secret of how she was killed. Along the way, the reader is treated to descriptions and explanations of matters as far-ranging as falconry, stone-sculpting, microbiology, and rare book collecting.

A relatively bloodless cozy with pacing as slow as a country stroll, Pursuit and Persuasion presents the petty rivalries of academia nicely. Ben Reese, whose background as a World War II scout provides enough of a provenance to put him in the detecting business, is an interesting protagonist who warrants a fuller portrayal. --Jane Adams

ACADEMIC SLEUTH BEN REESE RETURNS TO SCOTLAND,
ENTANGLED IN A CASE OF MURDER AMONG FRIENDS.

The sudden death of rich, generous Scottish professor Georgina Fletcher seems like a tragic accident. Indeed, American archivist Ben Reese can scarcely believe that it was not. But Georgina had foreseen her death, and had laid down a secret trail of evidence pointing to a hard-hearted murder committed by someone with much to gain if she died--or to lose if she lived. Was it the brilliant sculptor Georgina had educated and supported? The beautiful student who is also her heir? Her late husband's business associates? Or a jealous colleague in her own department?  It appears that someone very close to her not only killed with fiendish cleverness but wants to ensnare Ben like a blind rat in a live trap--from which he'll never escape. . . .

Watches of the Night (Ben Reese Mysteries)

A Ben Reese Mystery - Ben Reese, university archivist and part-time investigator, is alarmed when his old friend Kate Lindsay receives a disturbing package. It contains her husbands eyeball, retrieved from the front line and posted arriving twenty years later. Kate needs some answers so decides to visit veteran Ross MacNab, but when MacNab commits suicide hours before she arrives, Kate fears foul play. Bens suspicions, meanwhile, rest on another war comrade, but army records show he died years before . . .

Code of Silence (Ben Reese)

A Ben Reese Mystery - 1947. A female linguist at a high-security US decoding and decrypting facility is murdered while trying to relay vital information. Ten years later, Ben Reese is asked for his assistance in tracking a murderer guilty of breaching US security. Bens efforts to find the killer are difficult but he knows it is essential once he learns of the Venona Code, a Soviet code partially decrypted by the US and Britain . . .

Checklist of the Vascular Plants of Maine (Josselyn Botanical Society of Maine, Bulletin 13)