Twanged Mass market paperbound - 1999

Summary

First line

The thick sweet scent of turf burning in the chimney of Malachy Sheerin's one-hundred-and-fifty-year-old stone cottage, set back from the road yet not too far from the rugged coastline of the West of Ireland, always made him feel at peace.

From the rear cover

Regan Reilly plans to spend her Fourth of July week vacationing in the Hamptons at her parents' home and also with her best friend, Kit, who has a share in a group house. A last-minute phone call, however, casts Regan's trip in a new light. Brigid O'Neill, a rising country star, has been getting frightening "love notes" and she hires Regan as her bodyguard for a Fourth of July concert in Southampton. Brigid plans to play a fiddle given to her in Ireland and said to have magic powers. She later learns the rest of its legend - whoever takes it out of Ireland will have an accident or face death. Brigid and her band are invited to stay at Chappy Tinka's oceanfront compound. Tinka, heir to a thumbtack fortune, and Bettina, his ditzy wife, are social climbers trying to get on the Hamptons "A" list. At Chappy's castle, Regan encounters a cast of characters including Chappy's bumbling sidekick and accomplice, Duke; Bettina's live-in guru, "Peace Man"; and a feng shui specialist obsessed with rearranging furniture. A guest found floating face-down in a pool at Chappy's welcoming party for Brigid is only the first in a series of ominous incidents. As Brigid's Fourth of July concert nears, it looks as if the cursed fiddle should be shipped back to Ireland - Express Mail! It's Regan's job to hold the curse at bay and fend off Brigid's pursuers.