...a neo-Gothic thriller based loosely on the Angelic Inn

 1 Ragged Ridge Road
by Leonard Foglia, David Richards

Hardcover, 352 pages
Published by Pocket Books
Publication date: August 1, 1997
ISBN: 0671003542

 Reviews and Commentary for 1 Ragged Ridge Road

"Murder She Wrote" star Angela Lansbury proclaims: "The skillful weaving of threads from the past with the present creates a fascinating tapestry of events filled with intrique and mystery."

Actress Kathy Bates adds, "Fixing up an old mansion, solving a mystery, finding buried treasure - take this absorbing book to the beach but be sure to get home before dark!"

Bestselling author Kitty Kelley raves: "Fans of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca will enjoy this old-fashioned murder mystery with its ghosts and gothic romance. The pulse stopping suspense swirls around a dark secret intertwined with a struggle over wealth and power that leaves you breathless."

 From Kirkus Reviews:
In love with the decaying Kennedy mansion in backwoods Fayette, Pennsylvania, Carol Roblins talks her husband into her scheme to buy and restore it. But that's the last thing she does talk him into, since he's promptly posted overseas and tells her they both need room to think about their marriage. So Carol and her son Sammy, who's slowed by Attention Deficit Disorder, set about transforming the mansion into a bed and breakfast called the Christmas Inn. She isn't daunted by the news that the original Kennedys both died violently on Christmas Eve, 1928, only a year after their romantic wedding, so that even the name she's chosen for the Inn sends chills down the spines of locals with long memories--like Lyle Quinn, the ga-ga son of Charles Kennedy's banking partner, and historical society stalwart Esther McPherson, who has her own reasons for wanting to stifle Carol's plans. And when reinforcements arrive--a hunky contractor who slides into spending night after night on the living-room sofa and an even hunkier TV star whose idea of a joke is to tell an on-camera interviewer that he and Carol have solved the Kennedy mystery and will be turning the story into a Movie of the Week- -you can be sure that modern-day trouble will follow. Broadway director Foglia and Washington Post columnist Richards team up for serviceable neo-Gothic shivers, though you have to survive an awful lot of foreboding, toothless flashbacks to get to the payoff.