Category Archives: Hampton, Lynette Hall

Lynette Hall Hampton. Jilted by Death. Johnson City, TN: Silver Dagger Mysteries, 2004.

Willa Hinshaw is the new associate pastor at First United Methodist Church in Liverpool, North Carolina. She’s expecting that her job will involve sermons, Bible study sessions, and counseling. She’s not expecting kidnapping and murders, but that’s just what she encounters in this, the first novel in the Reverend Willa Hinshaw Mysteries series.

Lee Ann Poole, a lovely young woman from one of the town’s best families, is someone who Willa has meet only briefly after a church service.  Despite that, Willa is called in by her boss, the Reverend Philip Gallaway, to deal with the crisis when Lee Ann elopes on her wedding day, leaving her parents and her fiance bewildered.  Willa handles the immediate crisis beautifully–sending the flowers to a nursing home, the fancy food to a soup kitchen, and turning away the wedding guests in a dignified manner.  At home that night, Willa is exhausted and more than a little shocked when Lee Ann calls in a panic, saying she is in danger and begging Willa to come to Statesville to get her. Soon Willa is deep into the mystery of Lee Ann’s disappearance–consoling her mother, gently questioning the young man’s family, working with the retired policeman who is investigating the case.  Eventually Willa herself is in danger as the kidnapper spins a web of deceit and murder.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2004, Hampton, Lynette Hall, Mystery, Novels Set in Fictional Places

Lynette Hall Hampton. Echoes of Mercy. Kernersville, NC: Alabaster Book Publishing, 2007.

The leaders of the First United Methodist Church in Liverpool, North Carolina (a fictional town), are celebrating a successful fall festival when there is a sudden explosion in the cemetery. Reverend Willa Hinshaw, a transplant to the Piedmont town, seeks to solve the mystery of who put the bomb on the gravestone of Leo Kingfield and why. Willa and fellow Liverpool residents quickly suspect that members of Leo Kingfield’s family are behind the attack and are trying to scare his wife, Elva, out of the fortune Leo left her. Because Willa is interested in helping Elva, she is seen as a threat and begins receiving intimidating messages. Odd and terrifying events start to take place: Elva becomes ill and requires hospitalization, her friendly caretaker, Bernice, is stabbed and left for dead, and her confrontational niece is found strangled to death in Willa’s apartment complex parking lot. Finally Willa is kidnapped as the perpetrators’ desperation grows. Being thrown in the midst of strained familial relationships pushes Willa to outsmart the greedy Kingfield descendants in order to save her life and help Elva.

This is the second novel in the Reverend Willa Hinshaw Mysteries series.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

Comments Off on Lynette Hall Hampton. Echoes of Mercy. Kernersville, NC: Alabaster Book Publishing, 2007.

Filed under 2000-2009, 2007, Hampton, Lynette Hall, Mystery, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Piedmont