Main, Elizabeth C.

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Main, Elizabeth C.

PERSONAL: Married; husband's name Bob; children: Karen, Eric.

ADDRESSES: Home—Bend, OR. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Five Star, 295 Kennedy Memorial Dr., Waterville, ME 04901.

CAREER: Novelist. Book Barn, Bend, OR, part-time bookseller.

WRITINGS:

Richer by Far (romance novel), Avalon (New York, NY), 1998.

(With Sydell Voeller) Skateboard Blues/A Star for Courage (young-adult novel), Hard Shell Word Factory (Amherst Junction, WI), 2000.

Murder of the Month (mystery novel), Five Star (Waterville, ME), 2005.

SIDELIGHTS: Elizabeth C. Main began writing after raising two children, and she has published young-adult, romance, and mystery novels. Her third novel, Murder of the Month, features a nineteen-year-old protagonist who likes to be called Bianca rather than her given name, Louise. She is a thorn in her mother Jane's side and a not entirely credible source when she announces that county district attorney Gil Fortune has killed his wife by pushing her into the Crooked River Gorge. Bianca turns to her friends in the Murder of the Month club, including a grandmother and a young teen, who are fans of mystery fiction. When they sneak into the attorney's house to investigate, Bianca is arrested and charged with the wife's murder. Her friends hope to solve the crime to clear her name, but they become new targets for a killer who does not want to be identified.

Reviews of the novel suggested that it is light-hearted fare. A Kirkus Reviews critic noted that Main's story contains "high-spirited alarums and excursions but no clues and no real detection." In a review for All Readers.com, Harriet Klausner highlighted the main character's "strong but gentle sense of humor."