Peter Helmberger

"In a comedy of love and perfidy, a rich woman seeks the acquaintance of a long unacknowledged grandson. Greedy and unscrupulous, the woman's children hatch a fiendish plot to discredit the grandson, thus to exclude him frim his grandmother's will"--cover notes.

A Crow's Jamboree

Richard A. Andrews

George Augustus Pond

Carmen O. Nohre

Elmer W. Learn

Lee Monroe Day

P. M. Burson

R. Vern Elefson

Ray George Johnson

Roy O. Bridgford

An Analysis of Farmers Home Administration Ownership Loans in Minnesota

Financing Farms with 100 Percent Loans

Myron Willgrubs is a pedantic professor at the Plattefield campus of a large Midwest university. When he discovers a body in Pilgrims Park, he calls 911, but for reasons of his own refuses to divulge his name and later denies making the call. Before the police arrive to investigate, John Olivier, a macho formerly with the Green Berets and now heir apparent to the campus chancellery, also discovers the body, which he knows is that of Carl Madewell. Olivier has been having a torrid affair with Carl Madewell's wife Penelope. In what he tells himself is the Hoffa solution, Olivier removes the body from the park and stashes it in the freezer in his basement for later interment. When Penelope Madewell reports that her husband is missing, the police spring into action, thus bringing together a lovelorn detective, Patrick Delaney, and Professor Willgrubs' niece, Emily Peterson, runner-up in the 1997 Alice in Dairyland beauty contest. Several zany characters soon join the action, impeding both the police investigation and Detective Delaney's quest for Ms. Peterson's affections. Old and senile, Hattie Ellie Guck was watching for blue herons in Pilgrims Park through binoculars when she saw a man dump a body in the trunk of his car (or was it the backseat? she later wonders) and speed away. Although she doesn't call the police, she does tell her crooked grandnephew, Elwood Smythe, what she saw. A loose cannon, Smythe swings wildly from one target to another in schemes of blackmail. Underhanded and incompetent, Philip Moran is Plattefield's most senior detective and Delaney's mentor. He longs to organize a SWAT team to wage war on campus potheads. He vows revenge when taken off the case by the Chief of Police. Detective Delaney's old flame, Gigi Lamour, off to Hollywood to become a star, makes a porno flick and gets mixed up with the mob. She scurries back to Plattefield to marry Detective Delaney for both his money and his protection. Having hated each other for years, Mabel Freitag and Sophie Gargano work in the outer office of the current chancellor. Both are secretly plotting to ensure that John Olivier becomes the new chancellor, each supposing the other will get the boot when Olivier gets the appointment. Both conceal evidence that Olivier has a motive for murder and is lying to the police. The mystery is resolved when a psychopath, Sonny Zitsow, comes to Plattefield to kill Detective Delaney and is subdued by the most unlikely people in a most unlikely way.

A Most Inconvenient Murder

John Rosine

Economic Changes in the U.S. Famr Sector, 1948-1972

If It's Not One Thing, It's Another Murder

Donald Quimby is a prosecuting attorney with the Federal Trade Commission. Judged a nincompoop by his colleagues, his quixotic quest in life is to bring big business to heel in a radical restructuring of the American economy. Though longing for a wife and family, he refuses to commit to any woman because of the locker-room concern he has with what he calls his shortcoming. Sandra Panatella is Mr. Quimbys assistant. She is desperately in love with Mr. Quimby and believes he loves her back. Unaware of his psychological hang-up, she cant understand why he refuses to take her in his arms to do a mans business. Arnold Armentrout is a smart, hard-driving CEO of Apple-A-Day Packing, Inc., a fast-growing diversified food company. When the company was in financial peril some years back, he entered a conspiracy with Professor Charles Kozicki to rig the prices paid to the Pacific Northwest apple growers. (Professor Kozicki is an influential consultant to the Pacific Northwest Apple Growers Cooperative, a bargaining association.) Mr. Armentrout owes his position with the company to his marriage to the major stockholders daughter Louise. He is dissatisfied with his marriage in part because of his wifes hearty appetite for no-frills sex. He longs for a love life with greater subtlety, tenderness, and beauty, where, he tells himself one day on the way to work, lovemaking is a bond not a bang. Steven Burt is an ambitious and conniving vice-president of Apple-A-Day Packing. He plots with his wife Peggy to destroy Armentrout and take over the company. The novels characters collide when a corrupt U.S. senator, to placate a right-wing congresswoman from Idaho, with whom hes having an affair, secretly pressures the Federal Trade Commission into filing a complaint charging Apple-A-Day Packing with attempting to monopolize the processed potato business. Donald Quimby is chosen to lead the prosecutorial team because the FTC leadership doubts that any of its other attorneys wold take charge of a case so devoid of merit. (The FTC has no knowledge of Arnold Armentrouts conspiracy to rig prices paid to apple growers.) Arnold Armentrout is both enraged and terrified, enraged because he knows the charge against his company is bogus; terrified on the one-thing-leads-to-another principle. If the FTC prosecutors investigate his companys position in the processed potato business, mightnt they find out about his conspiracy to fix apple prices? Which would likely land him in jail? When Donald Quimby and his team of prosecutors arrive in Seattle to take depositions, the Burts spring their plot to upend Mr. Armentrout. The lives of the novels protagonists are soon strewn with confusion, guilt, broken hearts, and wounded pride. Solemn legal proceedings eventually give way to a comic wrestling match in which Quimby and Armentrout, confused but nonetheless fighting doggedly for the women they love, learn to bear lifes desperation with both a little more understanding and a little less disquiet.

Antitrust and Infidelity

A man in the federal witness protection program is killed in a hit-and-run accident. The FBI believes the Mob did it. Detective Patrick Delaney... isn't so sure. A corrupt coach and a song-and-dance man wannabe from LA team up to undo a blackmailer. Their nincompoopery awakens a cell of bioterrorists; but not to worry. Detective Delaney and Professor Myron Willgrubs, with help from a mean Holstein bull, team up to catch the bad guys and solve the hit-and-run mystery.

Peter Helmberger

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