Published Works of Hannah Fairchild
The Pennsylvania Dutch Mysteries

If It's Monday, It Must Be Murder

When Hawk County Supervisors decided the old steel fire chutes could still serve a meaningful purpose, they had not figured on them being used to hide the body of former Heisman winner, Terry Alum. Only disreputable Jeb Daniels knew who and why, and he isn't talking—anymore. Now all of Coal Town stands to get a black eye unless Sal and Sam McKnight, the famous Thaxton twins, uncover the fraud and deception, and pierce the wall of silence surrounding the death.

Read an excerpt from If It's Monday, It Must Be Murder

Dead in Pleasant Company

Did the learning disabled CEO commit murder? That's the million-dollar question. Somebody did.

In fact, for months someone has been killing people regardless of age, sex or geography and getting away with it. Oh sure, police know HOW they are dying. But why, where and, in particular, who is another story. The killer, dubbed Mastermind by the press, is protected by the same unique weapon he is using to kill indiscriminately and without apparent motive. Naturally the whole nation is in an uproar. Officials post huge rewards believing someone knows the truth and will come forward.

Then Judd Tunnelson, the nation's top investigating television journalist, hints he knows whom it is. The next day, Tunnelson is found dead in Pleasant Company after dining with Sam and Salome in the Thaxton twins' restaurant. But Tunnelson's death does not fit Mastermind's established pattern and the Plainfield cops aren't buying it. Instead they fix on Barney Schantz, Pleasant Company's head chef, who had plenty of reason to bump the bombastic newsman off.

Sal, now a police officer herself, is ordered to keep out of it so it is up to Sam to dig elsewhere. When a confession of sorts, one that will clear Barney, comes into Sal's hands, she convinces authorities the man couldn't have done it.

Then who?

Read an excerpt from Dead in Pleasant Company

Death on Delivery

Who would’ve thunk somebody in nice, quiet, Pennsylvania Dutch Plainfield would take to icing deliverymen? And with champagne yet!

To date, eleven Plainfield men have been found dead after making a delivery to a newly rented up-scale apartment. The murder scene is exactly the same in each case. The deliveryman is found seated at the dining room table, dead of a single glass of champagne liberally laced with poison.

The sheer casualness of the murders has nice, quiet “normal” Plainfield shocked to its core. Search as they might for something, anything, connecting the men, three investigative teams have been unable to produce a single viable clue.

In this, the third Fairchild mystery, Chief Warmkessel persuades Sal McKnight to forego her work with Juveniles and put her analytical mind to the problem, before hysteria tears the town apart.

With her “participas cur arum” twin, Sam Thaxton, off in China doing a job for the government, she taps Rick Masters, a transplanted Californian, happily eating his way through Plainfield’s restaurants, a disillusioned veteran sergeant and two young corporals for help.

In “Death On Delivery,” the third Pennsylvania Dutch Mystery, Sal and her team are joined by the “Main Duke” and his cohorts, who use their own inimitable skills in bringing about the successful apprehension of the murderer.

Read an excerpt from Death on Delivery