From Publishers Weekly
The real-life accidental shooting of a Civil War reenactment participant this past July at Gettysburg must have chilled Today show weatherman Scott and mystery writer Crider?for their second collaboration (after 1997's Murder Under Blue Skies) features a similar incident. But the person who fires the live bullet that hits semiretired celebrity weatherman Stanley Waters during a reenactment of the (fictional) Battle of Higgins probably didn't do it by accident, and the bullet that creases Stanley's skull kills local businessman Rance Wofford. Superficially wounded but seriously motivated, Stanley takes it upon himself to find out who in his Virginia hometown pulled the trigger. Neither the story nor the suspects have much depth, but Stanley comes off as an intriguing mixture of innocence and guile, and Scott fans will enjoy the inside references and jokes. "Something in Stanley drove him to seek publicity," we learn. "Even after he had become an established star of Hello, World!, he had gone out and opened shopping centers, visited convalescent homes, marched along in front of high school bands and emceed at balloon festivals." Stanley's comments about Hello, World! cohost Grant Tyler ("Those who thought that television personalities had only the best hairpieces had never seen Tyler, who often looked to Stanley as if he were balancing a squirrel atop his head") indicate that Scott knows as much about vengeance as the villains of this entertaining, if lightweight, novel. Mystery Guild featured alternate. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Stanley Waters gave up his job as a TV weatherman to move back to his small Virginia hometown and run a bed-and-breakfast. Stanley agrees to fill in for the TV show, where, in a stunning turn of events, he is shot, and Rance Wofford, a wealthy local businessman, is killed--all of which is shown live on national television. Stanley joins forces with paramour Marilyn Tunney, the Higgins police chief, to bring the killer to justice. Scott is, of course, the hugely popular weatherman on NBC's Today show. He supplies the show-biz details, but collaborator Crider carries the day. As he does with his beautifully realized Sheriff Dan Rhodes series, Crider captures the subtle jealousies, affections, and motives only small towns can offer. Stir in some priceless humor and the second Stanley Waters mystery is as enjoyable an exercise in mayhem as one is likely to find. Wes Lukowsky


Book Description
In the second mystery of their new series, celebrity weatherman Willard Scott and noted mystery-writer Bill Crider place retired weatherman Stanley Waters in jeopardy again. The residents of tiny Higgins, Virginia, are restaging the Civil War skirmish that put their town on the map, and Stanley, owner of the local Bed and Breakfast is determined to assist. Although none of the soldiers are given loaded weapons, real gunfire erupts, leaving Stanley injured and a local businessman dead. With quite a few suspects, Stanley cannot resist doing a little investigation of his own into the small town jealousies and resentments that surround him.

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
In the annals of famous people writing mysteries, there are some notables, including Margaret Truman, Steve Allen, and more recently, Willard Scott. Yes, everyone's favorite weatherman, that guy who once played Ronald McDonald and went on to be a morning favorite on the "Today" show, has begun penning mysteries. In his new one, Murder in the Mist, the murder involves a Civil War reenactment, the cast of a network morning infotainment show, and Stanley Waters, the retiree who runs one of the most interesting bed-and-breakfasts on record. This is Waters's second appearance via Willard Scott, following the delightfully cozy mystery Murder Under Blue Skies. In that story, Waters had just opened his bed-and-breakfast, and at the big opening celebration, murder entered the establishment when one of the female guests dropped dead, facedown, into a bowl of salsa. Stanley got involved in the case further when Marilyn Tunney, chief of police in the small town of Higgins, began tracking down the killer. Stanley is smitten with Marilyn, and she makes a return in Murder in the Mist. In this one, Stanley is persuaded to stage a Civil War reenactment near his Virginia home, mainly for publicity purposes. The entire cast and crew of his network show, "Hello, World," arrives to cover the event. But there are good and bad apples in the network barrel, and chief among the bad is Grant Tyler, the star of the show, at least as far as he's concerned. Grant had been the main annoyance of Stanley's career on the show, and even now, when he's in retirement, Grant manages to make smarmyremarksabout Stanley's baldness or his weight. But when the morning of the Civil War "battle" arrives, the television folk and the locals are all dressed to kill. Cameras roll, cannons fire, and it looks like a lot of fun until Stanley falls from a gunshot. Waking up in the hospital, Stanley learns that, in fact, he'll recover nicely, with not much damage owing to the nature of the bullet — essentially, a minié ball. But Rance Wofford, a local businessman, was not so lucky. Marilyn has to investigate this killing, which doesn't look entirely accidental, and Stanley joins her in sniffing out the murderer in their midst — and in the mist of an old Civil War battlefield, where the ghosts of the Confederate dead mingle with a modern-day killer on the loose. By turns Murder in the Mist is wacky, delightful, and surprising, and it will keep the reader guessing right up until the end of the story. Willard Scott and his coauthor, Bill Crider, have written a wonderful cozy mystery full of Civil War history tidbits and insider fun about network morning shows. Can't get enough of Willard? Get Murder in the Mist! —Douglas Clegg Douglas Clegg is the author of numerous novels, including The Halloween Man and Bad Karma, written under his pseudonym, Andrew Harper. His recent Bram Stoker-nominated short story, "I Am Infinite, I Contain Multitudes," can be found in the anthology The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, Volume 11. Copyright, Disclaimer, and Community Standards Copyright 1997, 1998, 1999 barnesandnoble.com llc

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In the second mystery of their new series, celebrity weatherman Willard Scott and noted mystery-writer Bill Crider place retired weatherman Stanley Waters in jeopardy again. The residents of tiny Higgins, Virginia, are restaging the Civil War skirmish that put their town on the map, and Stanley, owner of the local Bed and Breakfast is determined to assist. Although none of the soldiers are given loaded weapons, real gunfire erupts, leaving Stanley injured and a local businessman dead. With quite a few suspects, Stanley cannot resist doing a little investigation of his own into the small town jealousies and resentments that surround him.

SYNOPSIS