This was a GREAT book! I liked it a lot because she managed to have a good mystery, but have other little plots, like seeing Ethan steal, etc. The only bad thing is that she just left the plot hanging. I LOVE her books and I hope she writes more Christie and Company Books. I was VERY disapointed when I looked for more Christie and company books, but couldn't find any. I LOVE mysteries, and this was one of THE BEST I've ever read. Please read this, and, Katherine Hall Page, if you are reading this, this fan REALLY wants more Christie and company books!

Pix convinces Faith and her minister-husband Tom to rent a cottage in Maine for the month of August. A local artist is found floating in the bay and Faith's cottage is ransacked, of course Faith has to solve the mystery.

The author gives us a vivid description of the island setting. The mystery is a little convoluted, but you won't guess the solution. A really good beach book.

This second Faith Fairchild book is even better than the first one. Faith and her family are vacationing on an island off the coast of Maine, along with her friend Pix and her family. An elderly woman is found dead and her newly-completed quilt seems to have clues to the woman's stash of gold coins. Faith and Pix have a real challenge in unraveling the clues, while even more people begin to die. The setting and character interactions in this book are delightful and the mystery has just enough twists and turns to be interesting.

I loved this second Faith Fairchild mystery. Her books are short and light and just the ticket for a lazy Sunday afternoon. I find her prose to be witty and I love the relationship between Faith and her best friend, Pix. Can't wait to read more of this series. Just what cozy mysteries should be.

Lora Deane appeals to Tom and Faith Fairchild for help when she begins receiving threatening phone calls. She figures that it must be either her ex-boyfriend or a relative, Joey Madsen who is threatening her because she refuses to contribute to his new housing project at Beecher's Bog. The controversy becomes broader when the town becomes divided over the new project and those who oppose it begin to receive poison pen letters. A brick through Lora's window and the destruction of a piece of heavy equipment at the construction site deepen the community's concern. Soon there are two dead bodies and an attempted poisoning. Faith, as always, feels that her investigative powers are superior to the police, so she sets up a trap for the person she suspects is the murderer. Instead, Faith herself is trapped in a dangerous situation. This is another good "cozy" from a reliable author who also includes delicious recipes from her heroine at the end of the book.

Faith Sibley has always detested living in the fishbowl of being a Minster's daughter. So it is a shock even to her that she fell in love with the Reverend Thomas Fairchild. Her feelings are genuine and deep for the man. She leaves the sophistication of her beloved New York City to settle with him in the backwater town of Aleford. Initially, Faith was bored with her relocation, but after opening her own catering business, the town began to grow on her. Also helping her keep the ennui away is the fact that she always seems to keep stumbling over corpses and spending much of her time on solving how the victims died despite the vociferous protests from the police and her husband to mind her own business. An independent woman, Faith goes her own way so it is not surprising that when a rash of ugly incidents, culminating in arson and murder, happens, she is in the forefront trying to discover who the culprit is. Once again, Faith stumbles over a corpse in an isolated area. After a few more days of sleuthing without any progress, Faith decides to use herself as bait in order to catch the guilty party. Her plan backfires when she becomes caught in the murderer's web with no one but herself nearby to help her. Like the previous six Faith Fairchild novels, THE BODY IN THE BOG, is a classic cozy that showcases the pros and cons of living in a small New England town where everyone knows everyone else's most intimate secrets. Katherine Hall Page makes her characters and the town come alive, leaving the reader feel as if they are visiting with old friends. This is a very special and charming mystery series that entertains and educates at the same time. It is strongly advises to read all the books in this series for an extraordinary experience. Harriet Klausner

This book is the beginning of a growing list of "Body in the _____" series. Its heroine is Faith Sibley, a native New Yorker who has started a gourmet catering service. She meets and falls in love with Tom Fairchild, a young minister who whisks her away from her beloved home town to a much different life in rural Massachusetts. Faith is trying her best to fit into the role of pastor's wife in a small town where everyone's family goes back several generations and where everyone knows everyone else's business. While taking a walk with her baby son, Benjamin, Faith discovers a dead body in a belfry. The body is that of Cindy Shepherd a young, willful girl who had made plenty of enemies in their small town. The suspects include Cindy's fiance, and several men with whom she had had affairs and was subsequently blackmailing. Faith's curiosity and unofficial investigations eventually lead her and Benjamin into grave danger. This is an interesting and well-written "cozy".

Page has created an energetic and rather believable heroine in Faith Fairchild, a gourmet chef who marries a clergyman and moves from her hometown of New York City to a small town in New England. She feels like an outsider in her new home, but gets right in the thick of things when she finds a body in the town's most historic building. She is amazed to find that many of the residents are more upset that she rang the old bell than that a person was murdered!

I thought this book was highly entertaining, though I must admit that I spent a good deal of time wondering just which suburb she was supposed to be in, being myself a resident of the area. I would definitely recommend this book as a fabulous New England "cozy" with fun characters, solid writing, and good red herrings. She has written a good number of books in this series (Body in the Belfry being the first), so there is a lot to look forward to when you dive in! Page has also written a few young adult mysteries under the title of Christie and Company, which I have heard are also quite fun and educational for young readers.

Hall's charming heroine Faith had me searching the web for more titles featuring her as sleuth. The author's descriptions of New England landscapes, customs and people leap off the page. The book drew me in from the first paragraph, and, unbelievably, drew tears from me at critical moments, so much did I care about the characters. I'm so happy there are more "Faith Fairchild" titles out there to enjoy!

Faith Fairchild is asked by her Aunt Chat to investigate a nearby retirement home where a friend has died mysteriously. Faith is only too glad to oblige and is soon taken on as a volunteer in the kitchen, a job for which her former life as a caterer has well prepared her. Soon there are other mysterious deaths and accidents. The staff of the nursing home includes some very suspicious characters and Faith is soon up to her chef's cap in suspects. As usual in this series, Faith stumbles onto the true perpetrators in a somewhat accidental fashion. After almost being killed herself, Faith emerges with another solved mystery under her belt.

Fun book about what you always suspected went on in little towns. Loved the description of the snow.

What kept me going back to this book was the way the minister and his wife acted; both to each other and to others. People tend to put ministers, priests, rabbis, etc. up on pedestals. Faith and Tom Fairchild are allowed to be Human. She is distracted in church by the case, she has unchristian thoughts regarding various obnoxious characters, and she likes to indulge herself in designer clothes and gourmet cooking. She and her husband even have a real sex life! Egads! Yet, she is there for a friend in need or a parishioner. It was a little shocking to me at first (a southern fried Baptist), yet when thinking about it, it was nice to see a minister & his wife being Human instead of Holy. You can do both without being a hyprocrit; difficult, but do-able.

The book is great! Go get it and enjoy!

The adventures of Faith Fairchild make for rather low-key but very enjoyable reading; the characters are true-to-life and above, all, real. The plots make sense and are intricately woven into the lifestyle of the residents of Aleford, Massachusetts.

Faith Sibley was an up-and-coming caterer in Manhattan when she met and married Tom Fairchild, a minister. This new lifestyle wasn't totally strange to her, as her father and grandfather had been ministers, as well. It was the New England part of the equation that was the jolt, but gradually the small town charm began to take hold, as did her transplanted catering business 'Have Faith'. The birth of their son, Benjamin, made life wonderful, until the first murder in THE BODY IN THE BELFRY.

Now, it's two-and-a-half years later, coming on for Christmas--the busiest time in the church--and in this story, a large old estate in a nearby town has been converted to a residence for the well-heeled older citizens of the area. Run by a doctor, Roland Hubbard, plus his son and daughter, the genteel establishment should apparently have no problems. But a friend of Faith's Aunt Charity has discovered something, and mentioned it in a letter to her, but without any explanation. And then, suddenly, he dies. Aunt Chat asks Faith to please find out what went wrong.

When Faith seizes on the idea of visiting another resident acquaintance, she is taken for kitchen help, as the staff is temporarily overcome with the flu. She decides to go along with the idea, until the person she was going to visit collapses into the bouillion she had prepared.

An invitation to the Christmas Ball by the 'Pink Ladies' Volunteers takes Faith and Tom to Boston for the evening, and provides an introduction to the rest of the Hubbard family as well as various staff members, some of whom are definitely on the eyebrow-lifting side. As winter begins to settle in, preparations are underway for the church's Christmas season, not to mention all the holiday cooking and shopping, and Faith is kept busy with all the activity.

Her car slides off the road during a blizzard, necessitating a stay overnight at Hubbard House. What a terrific opportunity to do some exploring! But, when Faith returns to her room, she finds it occupied. By a corpse. Following so close after an accidental fall by one of the Pink Ladies, it's time to call in the forces of law.

The presence of John Dunne, a Detective Lieutenant of the State Police, plus Charley MacIsaac, the local police chief ensures a thoughtful conclusion. Indeed, you could do a lot worse than to embark on this series of life (and the occasional murder or two) in a small town in New England. I think you'll be glad that you did. My librarian recommended the first book to me, and I'm certainly happy I followed her advice.

This is NOT a Faith Fairchild mystery and should not be billed as such. Pix makes a few phone calls, and the Fairchilds turn up at the end. This, like The Body in the Fjord is about Pix Miller and her family. Pix is overseeing construction of the Fairchild's new summer house on the island, Samantha is working at the famous Main Sail camp, and Ursula is enjoying the summer at her house The Pines. Pix is appalled that the builder has done little work on the house, when her dogs are seen digging furiously at the bottom of the excavation. A quilt, then a human hand are uncovered at the bottom of the hole. The body is of Mitch Pierce, sometime house restorer, full time con man. Other strange things are occuring around the island. Increasingly vicious practical jokes are taking place at the camp, and counterfeit antiques, mostly quilts are turning up in the area. Then, local celebrity, Addie Bainbridge is found dead at her B & B. Pix is determined to get to the bottom of these mysteries.

I have always liked the Pix Miller character. She is more realistic than many mystery heroines. She doesn't have any special talents other than being incredibly organized, which seems to me to be more useful in solving murders. I am glad the author has given Pix another mystery of her own to solve. The author also helps us to get to know the people on the island better, hopefully she'll be taking us there again soon.

Faith and Tom Fairchild are building a summer home on Sanpere Island off the coast of Maine. Faith's friend Pix is spending the summer on the island, so Faith asks her to check up on the progress of the house. Pix is chagrined to learn that the builder has not started construction, but she becomes even more upset when she and her daughter discover a body in the hole dug for the basement. The body is wrapped in a quilt which gives Pix a clue to start her investigation. This is a departure from the rest of the series in that the main character is Pix instead of Faith. She is not quite as exciting a character as Faith, but seems to adopt some of her friend's penchant for investigating, sometimes at foolish risk to herself. A second body is found, also wrapped in a quilt and Pix decides that the two murders must be connected. Faith appears at the very end of the novel when Pix has almost solved the case. There are a lot of red herrings in this one and the author takes pains to paint the guilty parties as the "good guys."

I really enjoyed Pix Miller as the central character of Ms. Page Hall's series of mysteries. For a change, the heroine was not under the age of thirty and totally glamorous. As much as I like reading about the exploits of Faith, the sophisticated caterer and minister's wife, Pix Miller operating as head sleuth was a wonderful change of pace.

Tom and Faith Fairchild accompanied by their two children leave their Massachusetts home to spend the summer renovating their cottage on Sanpere Island, Maine. To their surprise the usually serene residents are livid as mansion building is in vogue with the invasion of wealthy individuals having houses built as toys for their use.

Some Sanpere islanders are a bit more active in their resentment, mostly with protests. When the tide ebbs the corpse of developer Harold Hapswell is found jammed between two ledges at the base of the lighthouse. Faith thinks Hapswell was murdered, which is confirmed when someone attacks her near the lighthouse. As the island simmers in anger, summer events continue. Faith unable to ignore the homicide following the attempted assault on her and begins her own brand of investigation.

THE BODY IN THE LIGHTHOUSE is a fun summer breeze cozy that is an ideal beach book. The story line moves in a contrasting way between the murder and the festivities. Though Faith should know better than to risk her life as she does, she remains a fresh amateur sleuth (after thirteen novels, amateur seems wrong, but then again the professional gets paid) willing to do what she thinks is right. This is simply a lighthearted breezy mystery.

Harriet Klausner

Faith and Tom Fairchild, along with their children, return to Sanpere Island off the coast of Maine to move into their summer home for the first time. Faith is chagrined to realize that Tom's idea and her idea as to what constitutes a house ready to move into, are two different things. Tom has been working diligently with a crew of men to finish up their house, but it's not yet ready for human habitation. Faith's best friend's mother, Ursula, kindly invites them to move in with her until their home is finished. Faith welcomes the opportunity to live in comfortable surroundings and to get to know Ursula better. The elderly woman confides in Faith that all is not well on the island. There is a battle between those who want to Keep Sanpere Sanpere (KSS) and those who want to develop it and thus remove the wilderness from the area. Things begin to happen to those who oppose the new developments and soon graffiti begins to appear on the island. One of the island realtors accidentally drinks some turpentine while preparing for a production of "Romeo and Juliet", and one of the major developers is found dead in the island's lighthouse. All signs point to one of the members of KSS, but there is no proof. Along with these disagreements, there is an ongoing struggle between two island families over lobster fishing rights. There are so many suspects that Faith is at a loss as to who might be responsible until the killer confesses to her. This is another good read from Katherine Hall Page which contains interesting information about the origins of lighthouses as well as a good mystery.

I am always in a rush to get the latest "Faith Fairchild" mystery and have read them all, however, this one wasn't my favorite. Too many characters and a boring ecoterrorist plot made this book drag on forever for me. Still, I'm hooked on this series and will anxiously await the next book.

I think this is a really good book. It's a really good book for people who like mysteries. I liked it so much that now I want to go to boarding school myself! I think anyone should read this-even if they don't like mysteries.

I've read every book in the Faith Fairchild series and have been generally pleased that the author has kept up the quality of the plotting and writing over the years.While I enjoyed this book fairly well, it just seemed a little off the mark. The references to popular teen culture (music, PC games etc) seemed a bit forced. The plot involving hate crimes at a upper-crust boarding school seemed to peter out and appeared to be used just for effect. The character of Daryl may be black but there is nothing in Page's characterization of him that is genuine and rings true. The same is true of the hate crimes plot.Page can do much, much better than this.

The 12th in the author's chronicles of New England caterer/sleuth Faith Fairchild removes her from the side of her minister husband Tom and their children Amy and Ben for some undercover work in Mansfield Academy, a nearby private boys' high school, where Patsy Avery, Faith's longtime lawyer friend, occasionally teaches. One of her students, junior Daryl Martin, has been the target of racist e-mails, newspaper clippings, and now a noose placed on a pillow. Patsy urges Faith to teach a cooking class at the school and use her detective skills to uncover Daryl's tormenter. Taking the job in the kitchen of Mansfield's Charleton House, Faith holds up a magnifying glass to students and staff ranging from headmaster Robert Harcourt and his flamboyant wife Zoe to games mistress Connie Reed, some oddball professors, and a few rather strange students like slick, handsome Sloane Buxton. As Faith sneakily searches rooms, tries to find out who's tampering with her kitchen ingredients and who has stolen Zoe's precious jewels, Sloane turns up missing, only to be found dead on the school's annual Bonfire Night. It takes another death, a lot more snooping, and the discovery of computer records and a host of uncovered secrets before Faith has all the answers. Clarity and suspense are often lost to slow-moving gossip, but Faith's fans are sure to be pleased with another of the author's always readable stories.

This is my first visit to the world of Catering Capers with Faith Fairchild and I found it very enjoyable. The book opens in the middle of January when no one is in the mood for social affairs, which in turn makes Faith's catering business less than bustling. So she agrees to go undercover (in the guise of teaching a Cooking For Idiots class) at a boys' prep school to investigate some racist attacks against the school's sole African-American student.

Unfortunately, the only thing her class cooks up is theft and multiple murders - one being that of her prime suspect in the racist attack who turns up well done in a school rally bonfire. But we know all the incidents have to be connected someway. And Faith will figure it all out in the end with some surprising results.

Faith is a very likable heroine - her adventures make for fun reading and her recipes at the end of the book are quite tasty. The Smothered Pork Chops were first rate, but her Peanut Butter Cookies couldn't compare to the ones my mother used to make.

All the ingredients are here: a gutsy heroine, money, a love interest, a mystery, a couple of murders, money, and beautiful people. Katherine Page stirs 'em all together, and even adds a cateress and a couple of recipes, just like some of the other leading mystery writers do.

And what have we got? Well, not a sumptous feast and not even a pouffy souffle. What is served to us is "The Body in the Big Apple" (ok, the food analogy doesn't work here). It's a pitiful offering: not much of a novel, not much of an entertainment, not even a particuarly good presentation. I found myself dozing off during the last ten pages--I had figured out whodunit and why, and I really didn't much care one way or the other. Even the apple recipes at the end of the book were gimmicky and not very exciting.

This book is not a good investment of your money or your time.

I was disappointed with this book. I like Faith Fairchild, although her gourmet attitude gets kind of annoying sometimes. I mean, reading about her life is like reading about a foreign country. But it can be very entertaining. But this time out, all we got were leftovers. It seems like the writer is getting tired of the Boston area and decided to cast around for more interesting backgrounds. We've done Paris, done Norway, done the coast, now it's time for NYC. Problem is, she left all the other characters we care about behind. By setting this book before Faith got married, all we hear about is her parents and sis (OK, kind of interesting), a boyfriend we know she didn't marry, and a friend we never heard of before. She didn't even include a epilogue that wrapped everything together and brought it back to the present. I was really disappointed.

I was intrigued at the thought of a prequel to the Faith Fairchild story. However, the book turned out to be a letdown.

I was disappointed to find that Faith was the same shallow, self-centered snob she always comes across as...only it was ten times more annoying without the usual cast of characters (particularly Pix) and the small-town New England setting to even things out. And it was even worse with the book being set in New York City, and Faith's intermingling with the "upper crust." The rich society cliches and constant use of expensive brand names and designers was way overdone. The author seemed to put so much emphasis on Faith up on a pedestal (she'd always been the dumper rather than the dumpee, there were plenty of men who'd drop everything for a call from her) that after awhile she stopped seeming real and stopped being likeable.

I also found the story not up to par from this author, whose work I usually enjoy greatly. Certain branches of the storyline were never resolved. Did Todd ever manage to track her down? Why did Harvey tell his mother to make her leave? Did she ever hear from Richard again? What was the connection between Lucy and Adrian? Why did Phelps want to borrow money from Hope? And, being that this was a prequel, I seriously doubt we'll ever go back 20 years again to find out. Since the author included a present-day epilogue, it seemed that some of those minor loose ends could and should have been wrapped up for those who read the series regularly.

The main plot wasn't too bad, but by the end of the book I'd already figured out whodunnit, which doesn't usually happen in this series. We were never told how Faith figured it out and what made her realize who it was, so I was left wondering where her conclusions came from...certainly not the same place as mine (one paragraph that seemed out of place and unnecessary, and made it obvious the author was trying to work in justification for her conclusion).

I'll look forward to the next adventure of Faith, and the knowledge that as trifling as I find her at times, Tom, the kids, and especially Pix, will be back to make for a very enjoyable read.