Invitation to a Killer

In Malliet’s second Augusta Hawke mystery, Augusta is approached by Callie Moore, who wants Augusta to ghostwrite her memoir so she can strengthen her chances at an ambassadorship. Augusta hesitates, but accepts an invitation to a dinner party at Callie’s. There she meets a pair of former spies, a congressman and his wife, a literary agent, a former reality TV star, and a doctor known for his work with the poor. After dessert, Augusta finds the doctor sitting outside in the dark—dead. Though the cause of death is declared a heart attack, Augusta can’t rid herself of the feeling that it was murder. Several months later, to test her theory, Augusta gathers all the dinner guests, allegedly for a writers’ retreat at a remote lodge. With the help of the doctor’s niece, she interrogates each of the suspects in an Agatha Christie-style finale to get to the truth about the doctor’s death.