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Hickory Dickory Stalk
Susan Rogers Cooper Book Review

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Plot Summary of Hickory Dickory Stalk
"    E.J. Pugh returns for her second murder mystery, in which her family is threatened by an obsessive stalker. First, E.J.'s five-year-old daughter Megan eats a Hershey's Kiss laced with glass found in their backyard, and the new family living in the murdered Lester family's house are far from normal: Aurthur and Ginger McLemore, and their young son Connor are a 'Stepford' kind of family; their teenage son Brad is the opposite, rebelling in both appearance and behavior.
    Noticing her jewelry and lingerie have been disturbed after having Brad babysit and catching Brad window-peeping, E.J. thinks he may have planted the glass-laced choclate in her back yard. Her suspicions are laid to rest when she finds Brad McLemore's nude strangled body in the back seat of her station wagon. The local sheriff thinks E.J. must have done it because of the multiple complaints she lodged about Brad, and the fact that he was strangled with E.J.'s garden hose.
    Soon, more attacks occur. The Pugh's backyard is firebombed, nasty personal ads are put in the newspaper in E.J.'s name, E.J.'s computer is flooded with vulgarities, and somehow Willis Pugh's new business partner, Doug Kingsley, thinks E.J. is a loose woman and hot for him. Who wants E.J. out of the picture? Why are they crazy enough to want to sully her reputation and kill her at the same time?
    "

Joe Burkholder, Resident Scholar

Review Analysis of Hickory Dickory Stalk
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Ratings are on a 1-10 scale (Low to High)
Plot

Composition of Book
Planning/preparing, gather info, debate puzzles/motives - 30%
Feelings, relationships, character bio/development - 40%
How society works & physical descript. (people, objects, places) - 30%




Tone of story - very humorous
Time/era of story: - 1980's-1999
Kind of investigator - amateur citizen investigator
Kid or adult book? - Adult or Young Adult Book
Crime Thriller Yes
Murder Mystery (killer unknown) Yes

Main Character
Gender - Female
Profession/status: - homemaker
Age: - 20's-30's
Is this an ordinary person caught up in events? Yes
How much violence does he/she use? - just the right amount
Ethnicity/Race - White/American
How sensitive is this character? - middling sensitive to others' feelings
Sense of humor - Cynical sense of humor
Intelligence - Average intelligence
Physique - average physique

Main Adversary
Identity: - Female
Age: - 20's-30's
Profession/status: - mastermind
Eccentric: Yes - obsessed - deluded - emotionally unstable
How much of work is main antagonist actually present in: - a little/some
Motive of antagonist - jealousy
Sense of humor - Mostly serious with occasional humor
Intelligence - Smarter than most other characters
Physique - very athletic

Setting
United States Yes
The US: - Texas
Small town? Yes

Style
Part of a series? Yes
Person - mostly 1st
Accounts of torture and death? - generic/vague references to death/punishment
How many deaths? - 1
Unusual forms of death - asphyxiation
Unusual form of death? Yes
Amount of dialog - roughly even amounts of descript and dialog
Most similar books to Hickory Dickory Stalk
One, Two, What Did Daddy Do? by Susan Rogers Cooper
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The Club by Jane Heller
Name Dropping by Jane Heller
Rose in the Dust by Louise Perry


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Susan Rogers Cooper Resident Scholar Profiles

TOP SCHOLAR:
  
Joe Burkholder  

SCHOLARS:
Bill Luke  


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