Showing results by author "Glen Ebisch" in All Categories

Charles Bentley is celebrating his seventieth birthday with his family at a local restaurant when a dying man stumbles into the restroom and falls at Charles' feet. A man who has been stabbed in the heart. Charles and his wife, Joanna, chief of police in the town of Opalsville in western Massachusetts, quickly discover that the man was a high-powered divorce lawyer, so he had more than his fair share of enemies. As they investigate further they find that the victim had unusually close relationships with some his clients, which may have increased even more the number of people who wished to ...

Aunt Emily is a famous mystery writer living in the Massachusetts town of New Fairfax. Alyssa is her niece, who has lived with her aunt since her parents were killed in an airplane accident when she was in her teens. Alyssa is a reporter for a local newspaper. Deadly Encounters contains their first three mystery cases. In The Golf Club Murders, those planning to develop a local golf course for residential housing are being murdered with golf clubs. Since this property might be a native American burial site, the question arises whether this Is a protest by enraged golfers or a native ...

When widowed sixty-five-year-old Ruth breaks her foot in a fall from a ladder, she is surprised when her caregiver turns out to be a sixty-year-old man. Is the successful mystery writer really ready to change her life for love, even if he is handsome and attentive? At the same time Ruth's thirty-year-old niece, Emma, is breaking up with her older lover, who is also a senior partner in the law firm where she works. Will the animosity between them force Emma to change her view of life and her profession? Love can happen in either the early acts of life or in a later one. In either case, it ...

These are the first four novels featuring Charles Bentley, a retired professor of English Literature who worked at Opal College in Opalsville, Massachusetts in the upper northwestern corner of the state. Upon his retirement, Charles finds himself becoming involved in solving a number of murders that occur in his part of the world. A widower, now without a full-time job, he is also at a decision point in his life where he must deal with new romantic interests and the possibility of pursuing a career path allowing him to develop new talents. Charles rapidly finds that the remaining decades of...

Shawn Burke is a retired television actor who, for twelve years, portrayed private detective Quentin Mars on a popular television show. Taking some of the substantial money he made as a result of his success, Shawn has purchased a former church in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts and renovated it to be a theater where he intends to put on legitimate theater productions for the many New Yorkers who travel to the Berkshires during the summer. He sees this as an opportunity to give young talent, both actors and writers, a chance to get started. It will also be his opportunity to be an ...

Charles Bentley, retired professor of English at Opal College in Opalsville, Massachusetts, and recently published mystery writer, travels to Royston College in New Hampshire to help a woman he loved over forty years ago. Although she abruptly broke up with him at the time, he still feels obligated to her. She is now Royston's president but is accused of improperly attempting to influence a tenure committee, a charge which could force her from office. She requests that Charles represent her at the hearing, and he somewhat reluctantly agrees to do so. Charles soon discovers that fulfilling ...

Charles Bentley, a senior professor of English at the prestigious Opal College, is forced into retirement when Garrison Underwood is brought in from England to take his place. When Underwood is found bludgeoned to death in Charles' office, he must discover who murdered Underwood in order to clear himself. Only after the investigation leads to disturbing revelations about his own past and his closest relationships does Charles discover the truth about the body in his office. Newly edited and revised for 2024.

Innkeeper Max Moran is again involved in solving a murder when the actor playing the victim at a murder mystery dinner held at the Fireside Inn gives the best performance of his life and actually dies. Chief of police Philpot, who hates Max with a passion, dearly wishes to prove that Max is the killer, thus forcing Max to discover the killer's true identity. As usual, Max travels unsteadily along a twisty road that eventually leads him to the culprit. At the same time, Max has a starring role in the local Christmas play, Curzin' Toward Bethlehem, which reinterprets the story of the three ...

Max Moran looks like Superman but has the personality of Clark Kent. People expect him to take charge, but he'd much rather be a follower. Women expect an alpha male, but he's more the best friend of the romantic lead. This disconnect between his looks and his personality has caused him problems with his family, his girlfriends, and his attempts to develop an acting career in New York. Now he is managing his Uncle Edward's inn in the resort town of Lighthouse Point along the New Jersey Shore, and life is quiet, just the way Max likes it. Then a dead body turns up in one of the rooms, and it...

When Jerome Kronberg, who is facing prosecution for investment fraud, dies in a fall from a mountain in Connecticut, there are some people who believe it was no accident. Some think it was suicide; some suspect he was killed by an irate client. Others suspect a more supernatural cause. According to the legend of The Black Dog, if you see the dog three times on the mountain, you die, and Kronberg had seen the dog twice when he took his last hike.It is The Black Dog that motivates Marcie Ducasse to investigate the death for her Weird Happenings Column in Roaming New England Magazine. While ...

Clarissa Abbot has been the minister at Shore Side Community Church in Shore Side, New Jersey for just over three months. She feels she is settling into the job well, when difficulties arise. One of the members of her congregation owns a haunted bed and breakfast. The peaceful ghost had previously been something of a tourist attraction, but now it has suddenly begun assaulting people, and the owner wants it exorcised. Clarissa explains that ministers don’t do that, and she also expresses some doubts about whether the attacks are really being carried out by a ghost. This leads the owner to...

Max Moran reluctantly attends a Halloween party at the Congressional Hotel. When he has too much to drink - which is only a couple of glasses of champagne for Max - he goes off to the hotel library, where he promptly falls asleep. He is awakened by a woman dressed as a gypsy who insists on telling his fortune. She catches his undivided attention when she tells him that his lifeline may be about to run out. She also warns him that a mysterious man will soon come into his life, and he should be particularly respectful of this individual. When just such a strange man shows up that night but ...

Max Moran, who looks like Superman but has the personality of Clark Kent, is a failed Broadway actor who manages his uncle's inn on the New Jersey shore. Although Max would like nothing better than to be an innkeeper and an actor in community theater, life requires him to solve murders. These are the first three cases Max must solve, often at great danger to himself as he is forced to rely on his acting skills to pretend to be a detective. This is a newly revised and edited edition.

Pastor Clarissa Abbot is struggling through the pandemic as minister at The Shore Side Community Church, doing more home visits than ever and trying to keep her congregation healthy and safe. Adding to her problems, a member of her congregation, Brenda Fisher, who is a real estate agent, finds the body of a murdered woman in one of her beach rentals. Distressed by her discovery and concerned that the police may see her as a suspect, Brenda comes to Clarissa and asks her to become involved in the investigation. Although she initially resists, Clarissa finds herself being drawn more and more ...

Charles Bentley receives two surprises. First of all his wife, Joanna, who is also chief of police in Opalsville where they live, wants to have a large Thanksgiving celebration in their new home. She asks Charles to do the inviting. Under some pressure he agrees, wondering all the while where he will round up enough people for such a gathering. The second surprise comes when his old friend Sidney Collins comes to see him. Charles and Sidney were undergraduates together at Yale and went on together for graduate school in English literature at Harvard. Sidney is a well known public ...

Set in the resort town of Shore Side at the southern tip of the New Jersey shore, the story begins when Madison Revere, a lawyer in her late twenties, is attending a summer celebration sponsored by her law firm. It turns deadly when a senior partner is murdered with an ice pick in the middle of the party. Asked by one of the other senior partners to investigate, Madison finds that the killing has surprising roots in the distant past. At the same time, she is involved in helping her best friend Cindy exonerate her boyfriend, who is suspected of killing this ex-wife. Both cases cause Madison ...

Charles Bentley, semi-retired professor of English at prestigious Opal College in the Berkshires of Massachusetts, is confronted in his office one day by Sebastian Locke, a survivalist living in upstate Vermont who is on campus to give a speech. Locke is concerned because his daughter’s history professor approached her in an inappropriate way. Bentley has the daughter in class, so Locke has come to him for information on this professor. Charles gives him some advice, and they also have an intense discussion about Thoreau. Charles decides to attend Locke’s presentation that afternoon, ...

Madison Revere, a lawyer in her late twenties, lives on the New Jersey shore in a fancy Victorian home she got in a terrific deal from one of her past boyfriends. Although she is living well, she is lonely. Her previous boyfriend has moved to Manhattan, and her best friend is married with a baby and a busy life of her own. Even Madison’s dog has moved on to live with her friend. As a result, she feels at loose ends with only her work to keep her occupied. So, when a woman her own age, who is a researcher for the local police department, comes to question her about the suspicious death of ...

When Charles Bentley finds the body of his next door neighbor on her kitchen floor, she shows no signs of obvious injury. Since she had worked on the faculty with him as an artist for a number of years and has remained an acquaintance, he is concerned about what happened to her. He is a bit skeptical when the coroner says she died of a heart attack, since she gave every appearance of being in good health. The more Charles digs into her life, the more he thinks about changing his own. At the end, he finds that she did not die of a heart attack, rather she died for art.

When Charles Bentley, retired English professor and sometime amateur sleuth, marries the chief of police in the Town of Opalsville in the Berkshires of Massachusetts, he expects to support her in sickness and in health. However, he does not anticipate having to discover who killed one of her officers, but this turns out to be the case, despite the fact that Charles is in the midst of a career change to becoming a mystery novelist. As usual, Charles is surrounded by strong, attractive, and somewhat frightening women who offer suggestions on how he should behave. Not deterred by criticism or ...