Robert Gregg, whose books are top sellers at Long’s Cards and Books, will appear at the Main Street retailer from 10 a.m. to noon Aug. 20 to visit with readers and autograph books.
Gregg’s list of books includes five in the Crooked Lake Mystery series. The most recent, The Cottage With Too Many Keys, was published earlier this year, and brings back a couple of characters who will be familiar to those who enjoyed some of his earlier books.
In The Cottage With Too Many Keys, summer residents return to Crooked Lake after a long, cold winter and are horrified to find the body of a beautiful young woman in the cellar of their cottage. The sheriff identifies her as an exchange student from Sweden who went missing back in January. But how did her body come to be in a cottage which had been closed and locked up since the previous September? The sheriff and her partner soon find themselves in search of the person who had both a reason to kill the young woman and a key which provided access to the cottage.
Gregg says he’s working on a sixth book in the series now, and calls writing a form of retirement. “I’m enjoying it... frequently the plots take turns I don’t expect.”
Although he calls the lake in his books “Crooked” rather than “Keuka,” the descriptions and settings easily bring Keuka to mind. Keuka Lake has been close to his heart and mind for several years. He is a native of Corning who earned degrees at Colgate and Cornell Universities.
“I’ve always enjoyed reading mystery stories and I know the lake. My parents rented places on the east side, south of Penn Yan for years,” he explains, adding that his father retired to West Lake Road following a career at the Corning School District. Gregg and his wife purchased a summer home on the lake while he was teaching at Syracuse University.
Most recently, he was a professor at American University in Washington D.C. from 1970 to 1999.
All of the books in the Crooked Lake Series are on sale at Longs’ Cards & Books, and Gregg will sign any of the books Friday.
The series includes:
• A Death on Crooked Lake (2006
• Setting the Stage for Murder (2008)
• The Man Who Wasn’t Beckham (2008)
• The Scarecrow in the Vineyard (2009)
• The Cottage With Too Many Keys (2010)
