Calamity at the Continental Club

by Colleen J Shogan

Overview

The Mayflower Society is about to hold its annual meeting at Washington D.C.'s swanky gathering place for the elite, the Continental Club. That means Kit Marshall's upper-crust future in-laws, Buffy and Winston Hollingsworth, are coming for a visit. Annoyed that Kit has not set a date to marry Doug, Buffy wants her to commit to a high society wedding at the club. Kit, though chief of staff for a congresswoman, feels uncomfortable with Buffy and Winston's crowd.

Kit receives an unexpected reprieve in the form of murder. En route to her morning jog, she encounters the corpse of the leader of the Mayflower Society, conservative multimedia tycoon Grayson Bancroft. On the security cameras, no one was seen entering or leaving the club, which means the culprit had to be an overnight guest. Little love was lost on Bancroft, but the police have their prime suspect: Doug's father.

Buffy and Winston, formerly disdainful of Kit's sleuthing, urge her to investigate. With her future in-laws' freedom and reputations at stake, Kit sets out once again to solve a murder mystery, this time aided by her fiance Doug in addition to her friends Meg and Trevor and her dog Clarence. Her search for clues will take her from the club to the Smithsonian Museum, the National Archives, and Mount Vernon.

Book 3 of the Washington Whodunit series, which began with Stabbing in the Senate and continued with Homicide in the House.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781603813358
Publisher:	Camel Press
Publication date:	07/01/2017
Series:	Washington Whodunit , #3
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	655,729
Product dimensions:	4.60(w) x 7.60(h) x 0.20(d)

About the Author

Colleen J. Shogan has been a fan of mysteries since the age of six. A political scientist by training, she is a senior executive at the Library of Congress where she works on great programs like the National Book Festival. A proud member of Sisters in Crime, Colleen won a Next Generation Indie Award in the Best Mystery category for her first novel Stabbing in the Senate. She lives in Arlington, Virginia with her husband Rob Raffety and their rescue mutt Conan. For more information, go to www.colleenshogan.com.

Read an Excerpt

Doug was conked out. I dressed quickly in my exercise clothes and grabbed the room key card before quietly closing the door. I skipped down two flights of stairs and arrived at the floor where we'd had dinner the night before. As I turned the corner past an antique grandfather clock, I spotted the portrait on the wall of Gertrude Harper, the granddaughter of the original mansion proprietors. I was no art historian, but I'd read that the Vermeer-influenced Frank Weston Benson had painted the comely twenty-four-year-old at the turn of the century. The National Gallery of Art owned the original oil painting, which had been on display in prominent places such as the vice-president's residence and the National Portrait Gallery. With no chance of acquiring the masterpiece, the Continental Club had commissioned an impressive reproduction.

I'd planned to examine the portrait last night. Impressionism, even the American version, was my favorite period of art. We hadn't lingered in the anteroom before or after dinner, so I'd given the painting no more than a passing glance.

Now I walked toward the mantelpiece to take a closer look. Gertrude really had been a beautiful young woman. The websites detailing the history of the building and the club hadn't exaggerated her enchanting smile and the long strokes used to depict her flowing white dress. She was the Continental Club's Mona Lisa.

My Fitbit buzzed, its annoying way of reminding me it was time to get moving. Somehow Gertrude Harper had managed to remain slim without jogging around Dupont Circle. I wasn't so fortunate.

I turned away from her portrait to head back toward the main staircase. In the far corner of the room near the entrance to the club's library, I spotted a man's dress shoe. How odd. The Continental Club wasn't the type of place where patrons had one too many glasses of wine and lost their footwear en route to bed. That went double for the Mayflower Society crowd who occupied the vast majority of suites inside the building.

Curiosity got the better of me. The library entrance was adjacent to another Continental Club treasure I'd wanted to check out, the bronze bust of Benjamin Franklin. During the Second World War, when the club met inside Dolley Madison's former house, the Franklin statue adorned the room where key discussions about nuclear fission and the atomic bomb took place. Now it resided on a perfectly engineered pedestal in front of a prominent arched window, inviting photographers strolling along the nearby street to take advantage of the striking profile it provided when the light was just right.

I didn't get much of a chance to admire Franklin or read the detailed inscription at the base of the statue. A guest who'd unwisely overindulged hadn't abandoned his shoe the night before. Instead, the shoe belonged to a man whose body lay flat on the floor of the library.

Editorial Reviews

05/22/2017
At the start of Shogan’s diverting third Washington, D.C., mystery (after 2016’s Homicide in the House), congressional aide Kit Marshall and her fiancé, history professor Doug Hollingsworth, join Doug’s socially prominent parents, Buffy and Winston, at the annual meeting of the Mayflower Society held at the exclusive Continental Club, after which nearly all the attendees, including Kit and Doug, spend the night. Early the next morning, Kit discovers Grayson Bancroft, the Mayflower Society’s president, lying dead on the floor of the club library. Grayson has been poisoned, and the police quickly determine that the killer must be someone at the club. Doug normally disapproves of Kit’s amateur sleuthing, but when Winston becomes a suspect, he has no objection to Kit seeking to prove his father’s innocence by finding the real killer. Interesting and informative trips to such historical sites as Mount Vernon, the National Archives, and the Smithsonian add spice to this appealing whodunit. Agent: Dawn Dowdle, Blue Ridge Literary. (July)

Publishers Weekly

"The fourth volume in author Colleen J. Shogan's simply outstanding 'Washington Whodunit' series, K Street Killing is a consistently entertaining read with many an unexpected twist and turn by a true master of the genre."

--Midwest Book Review

"Diverting [....] Interesting and informative trips to such historical sites as Mount Vernon, the National Archives, and the Smithsonian add spice to this appealing whodunit."

--Publishers Weekly

"The third novel in Colleen Shogan's outstanding Whodunit series, Calamity at the Continental Club once again reveals her genuine mastery of the genre. A consistently compelling and entertaining read from cover to cover, Calamity at the Continental Club is unreservedly recommended to the attention of dedicated mystery buffs and will prove to be an enduringly popular addition to community library Mystery/Suspense collections."

--Midwest Book Review, Wisconsin Bookwatch

"Calamity at the Continental Club is a fun read and moves fast. Shogan injects humor into the story, through the first-person thoughts of Kit Marshall. [....] Shogan, familiar with the Washington, DC, museums and restaurants, freely shares her knowledge, bringing the reader more closely into the settings. For those who enjoy a quick read with a satisfying ending, put this on your shelf!"

--Judith Reveal for the New York Journal of Books

"Exceptional.... Each distinctive personality shines as they bring the case to a close. Be prepared for another adventure."

--RT Book Reviews

From the Publisher

07/01/2017
Kit Marshall and her fiancé, history professor Doug Hollingsworth, are spending several days with her upper-crust future in-laws at the Continental Club in Washington, DC. The Mayflower Society is holding their annual meeting there. Doug's father loves history, while his mother, Buffy, hopes to entice Kit to hold her wedding there. But their plans come to an abrupt end when a conservative multimedia tycoon is killed, and Doug's father appears to be the suspect. Kit and her fellow congressional staffers relish the opportunity to investigate another murder in Shogan's third DC-set series, following Homicide in the House. VERDICT Readers who enjoy American history will appreciate this light mystery, including tours of Mount Vernon, the National Archives, and the Smithsonian.—LH

Library Journal