Walker, Mary Willis. Under the Beetle’s Cellar. Crimeline, 1996.
Reason read: Walk was born in the month of May. Read in her honor.
Eleven small children, specifically the first born in each of their families, have been taken hostage by a cult leader convinced the end of the world is coming soon. Samuel Mordecai had buried the children and their school bus driver in a bus in the ground forty five days earlier in an effort to “purify” them. When we join the story the end of the world is in five mere days and FBI negotiators are no closer to a viable rescue. They do not even know where the children are being held. As a last ditch effort, is up to reporter Molly Cates to get inside Mordecai’s head and convince him to release the children. She has interviewed him before. Molly starts with Mordecai’s adoptive grandmother to get a sense of how the woman raised this fanatic cult leader. When Molly learns Mordecai was abandoned at the edge of a high school she sees an opportunity to get further inside his head by finding his birth mother. It is a gamble, but it just might work, but can she do it in time?
Small irritation. Molly meets with a Dr. Asquith who starts off with an accent (ah = I, mah = my) but he loses that accent within one paragraph and pronounces I and my without inflection.
My other small irritation is the use of brand names like Coors, Snackwells, and McDonald’s. If a business were to become obsolete, the story would not hold up and would appear dated. Does everyone know the Snackwell brand?
Author fact: Walker died at 81 years old in 2023.
Book trivia: Under the Beetle’s Cellar is the second Molly Cates thriller. Once again, sigh, I am reading them out of order. Go figure.
Playlist: Cat Stevens’ “Morning Has Broken,” “La Bamba,” Rolling Stones, “The Wheels on the Bus,” Mick Jagger, and “100 Bottles of Beer on the Wall.”
Confessional: I dated someone in high school who loved Revelations 6:8. He could quote the passage about the pale horse, death and hell and did so all the time.
BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “I Love a Mystery” (p 117). I have to argue is this really a mystery? We know who kidnapped the children and we know why. The only mystery is will Molly Cates get Samuel Mordecai to free the children?
~*LunaSea*~ 