SLCL Hosts Mystery Writer Elaine Viets at Daniel Boone Branch

St. Louis County Library Foundation’s Favorite Author Series presents former St. Louis Post Dispatch columnist and popular mystery writer Elaine Viets for a discussion and signing of “The Dead of Night,” a new installment in her Angela Richman Death Investigator series.

The event will take place on Thursday, May 11 at 7:00 p.m. at the Daniel Boone Branch, 300 Clarkson Rd., Ellisville, MO 63011.

The program is free and open to the public. Books will be available for purchase at the event from The Novel Neighbor.

A native of Florissant, MO, Elaine Viets was a popular columnist for the St. Louis Post Dispatch for twenty-five years and the host of the television program “Viets Beats.” Since leaving the journalism business, Elaine Viets has written 34 mystery novels, including the popular Dead-End Job series, starring private eye Helen Hawthorne; and the Josie Marcus Mystery Shopper mysteries.

With the Angela Richman Death Investigator series, Elaine returns to her hardboiled roots and uses her experience as a stroke survivor and her studies at the Medicolegal Death Investigators for Forensic Professional Training Course at Saint Louis University.

In the seventh installment in the series, “The Dead of Night,” Death Investigator Angela Richman finds two dead bodies in a cursed crypt on Halloween. Has a Chouteau Forest legend turned deadly, or is a dangerous killer on the loose?

Everyone in Chouteau Forest knows the legend of the Cursed Crypt. It's claimed that the restless spirit of a professor nicknamed Mean Gene Cortini, buried in Chouteau Forest University's crypt, has been causing death and destruction in the Forest for almost two centuries.

Local residents are used to disease and natural disasters striking every seven years. But not murder. When Trey Lawson outbids the wealthy Du Pres family at the university's annual Howl-o-ween Benefit Auction, he wins the chance to spend the night in the crypt with his fiancée Lydia. Angela Richman, Death Investigator, finds their mutilated bodies there the following morning.

As Angela investigates, she learns that Trey was threatening the established hierarchy of Chouteau Forest. Has the legend taken a deadly turn, or are Trey and Lydia victims of a vicious power struggle?

Program sites are accessible. With at least two weeks' notice, accommodations will be made for persons with disabilities. Call 314-994-3300 or contact us.