Essay: Remembering the World's Best Shopper

Georgie, Maggie and Liz, dressed to the nines!

I called my mother “The World’s Best Shopper” in columns I wrote for the Kennebec Journal from 1988 to 2024.

Georgiana Mello Soares loved to shop and loved a bargain. She worked in retail for most of her life, so she knew her stuff. And how to wield that employee discount.

Mom was raised by Azorean immigrants during the Depression, so she learned early on the value of a dollar. When we were young, she made many outfits for my sister and me (they were lovely; she was an excellent seamstress) but usually bought our first-day-of school clothes  at one of her favorite discount stores. These were located in cavernous former mills in Fall River, Mass.: Arlans, the Globe and the Kerr Mill.

These were both recreational outings and bargain-hunting expeditions. My elementary school pictures show me in a succession of cute little frocks; in one I’m wearing a matching headband studded with metallic stars. Mom was frugal but she had taste. She also liked finding just the right outfit.

The Kerr Mill carried records, and Mom usually allowed me to buy one 45 per visit. My first album had to wait until I had my own dough. The Globe had books, and, again, I could usually wheedle one Whitman Classic or one book from the “Donna Parker” series (a teenage girl who dealt with angst and mysteries) each time we went there. I think they were 99 cents.

But it wasn’t always about saving money. One of my earliest memories is of Mom and I going on the bus from our home in Swansea to McWhirr’s, Fall River’s iconic department store. We’d always have a little something to eat at the soda fountain. Later, it was where I’d buy my Girl Scout uniforms. Still later, Mom worked at McWhirr’s—in the bargain basement. Of course.

Mom and I enjoyed shopping together all her life. When she came to Maine, one of our pleasures was going to the old Paper Store in Hallowell to buy marked down Christmas items after the holiday. Every year when I hang my whimsical “Man in the Moon” ornament, I think of Mom.

She would buy me Christmas and birthday gifts when we were out shopping on her visits here, if I said I liked something I saw. I’d forget what they were and truly be surprised when they showed up again on Christmas Eve.

When I went through her things after she died, in February, 2009, I found a Christmas present she had forgotten to give me. I’d forgotten about it too.

My prize find with the World’s Best Shopper came when I was in high school. She took me to a tucked-away shop in one of the old mills, where a sewing shop was creating samples for high-end designers. Some of these were on sale, and I snagged a Betsey Johnson. It was a sky-blue mini-dress, the fabric imprinted with yellow butterflies. I adored it.

I wore it at college, and one day one of my favorite professors commented, “That’s a great dress!”

Yes, it was. I wish I still had it—I wish I still had the World’s Best Shopper by my side.

_______

I welcome email at lizzie621@icloud.com

Review: "The Shadow Friends," Tess Gerritsen

 

They call themselves The Martini Club now. But they’re retired CIA.

In The Shadow Friends, they prove they still have the chops to get the job done.

Ingrid Slocum is helping coordinate a conference on global catastrophes and her husband, Lloyd, and friends Maggie Bird, Declan Rose and Ben Diamond are in the audience at the Cod Cove Resort in Purity, Maine.

When a speaker doesn’t show up for his presentation, Maggie goes up to check on him—and finds him near death. She gives him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, and finds herself in medical isolation when authorities suspect the man has an infectious disease.

Meanwhile, police chief Jo Thibodeau is called in when a waitress at the resort goes missing. Turns out she’s dead, too. 

What the heck is going on?

Ingrid’s former colleague and lover, Rodrigo, shows up at the conference. He’s running a sort of private international security organization and wants her to join him on a mission. Ingrid is torn—the lure of her former exciting life is strong. When she sees that the missing waitress has been stabbed with a stiletto, she knows she must go with Rodrigo.

The stiletto is a weapon used by the Vory, Russia’s murderous crime syndicate. Ingrid and Rodrigo survived a horrible ambush by Vory members, years before in Provence.

Others did not.

Lloyd is not amused at Ingrid’s sudden disappearance. But he’s a former analyst without field training. He has the technical skills to determine that Ingrid is in Amsterdam, but he really doesn’t know what to do once he gets there. Luckily Maggie is with him, because it’s a wild ride from there to Madrid, and then back to Maine.

Whew. The pages turned!

How can a waitress from Purity be involved with the Vory? Was there a fifth perpetrator at the ambush in France, one that got away? Is a young Russian man who works at the resort somehow involved?

The friends face danger and the surprising, but determined, killer—but there is also a final, satisfying twist at the end. 

It was inspiring to see this group doing what they love best—even though Lloyd, the “desk jockey” decides that he really prefers the quiet life. Something tells me that, with his wife and friends, that’s wishful thinking.

Review: "The Silent Appeal," Janice Hallett

The Fairway Players are back at their usual antics in this delicious, suspenseful mystery.

This time, however, committee co-chair Sarah-Jane MacDonald’s sister, Nicky-Rose, has suddenly returned to Lower Lockwood after 20 years abroad—with a big secret to hide.

The Players are staging Agatha Christie’s The Hollow. Since I happened to reread this classic just last year, I was pleased by the choice and the way Hallett reflects Christie’s novel in the plot of The Silent Appeal. The Fairway Players grumble, of course, as they are wont to do. No one wants to play Greta, the dumpy wife who’s wronged, so director Kevin MacDonald (Sarah-Jane’s husband) has to call in the infamous Issy Beck, well known to the readers of Hallett’s first book, The Appeal.

There is also the matter of the star prop of the piece, a Victorian mole-trap, which prop coordinator Denise amazingly locates in an antique shop. Readers, keep your eye on that beauty.

Kevin struggles to keep the unruly players in line. Nicky-Rose, who has a background in dance and theatre, finally decides to help out and she knows what’s she’s doing. Does Kevin fall in love with her? Sarah-Jane is stuck at home with the tot from hell, Sammy, because her mother and usual babysitter, Carol, has decided to take up with the Mendon Players when she doesn’t get the part she wants with the Fairway group.

As in The Appeal, the story is told through texts, emails and documents, with Roderick Tanner, KC (retired), enlisting the help of former law students, now full-fledged lawyers, Femi and Charlotte to solve the case.

It’s amazing how well this technique works. There’s so much going on besides the play, and the reader gets the whole scoop, albeit from a bevy of unreliable narrators. 

Do-gooder Fran Elroy-Jones has brought more dubious types into the group: Amelia and Lucas Stibson and his cousin Georgia. They sponge off Fran and are alternately annoying and dangerous. 

Fran, meanwhile, is having an affair with a married man.

Celia Halliday, who directs every other play with her husband Joel (don’t forget the OBE after his name—it’s the law) is up to her usual tricks. She just hates it when she’s not in charge.

And at the heart of it all is Nicky-Rose. What happened in Barbados? Why is she tolerating a friendship with clingy Issy? Is she somehow involved with Lucas?

Femi and Charlotte discuss and reflect as Roderick sends them documents in batches. He has a medical emergency, but that doesn’t stop him. As the finale approaches, Hallett pulls out all the stops: The texts and emails are out of consecutive order!

I enjoyed this romp from start to finish and can only hope the crazy Fairway Players will be back again. Well, most of them. A few will be in jail.

___________

Note: As the holidays approach, consider reading Hallett’s novella, The Christmas Appeal, featuring the Fairway gang. I know I’ll be rereading it in December. It’s a hoot.

Review: "The Body in the Bath," Ragnar Jónasson

 

Reykjavik police officer Helgi is in trouble. Bergbóra, his former girlfriend, is dead---and Helgi is accused of murdering her.

 

This is Helgi's third appearance, following Death at the Sanatorium and The Mysterious Case of the Missing Crime Writer. He is a low-key guy who's obsessed with classic murder mysteries. Given his passive nature, it's not surprising he puts up with Bergbóra's alcoholic, violent rages. Or that he never told anyone except his psychotherapist about how she abused him. Or that he even kept paying the rent on the apartment they once shared even after he left her.

 

Helgi finally put his foot down when Bergbóra ran over his new girlfriend, Anita. Of course, the fact that Bergbóra murdered Anita makes Helgi a prime suspect in her death.

 

Before Helgi is taken into custody, he was continuing to investigate the disappearance of his predecessor, Hulda. (She is the main character in Jónasson’s “Hidden Iceland” series.) Bergbóra was found dead in her bathtub. By strange coincidence, Helgi was examining one of Hulda’s cases that also involved a corpse in a tub.

But he is interrupted in his work by two of his colleagues. Alexander seems convinced Helgi did it, but the younger Mani is keeping an open mind. After all, Bergbóra was a beast. Surely she had destroyed other lives along the way.

Jónasson is the master of the slow boil. He builds suspense with spare prose. Helgi’s plight is agonizing. He has a decent lawyer, but is that enough? He doesn’t always stand up for himself as he should, but the pressure is wearing on him. Will he break?

When the final revelation of the murderer’s identity is made, it is shocking, heartbreaking, and yet totally believable.

This is a gripping addition to a fine series.

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The Body in the Bath will be released on November 10, 2026. I read an advanced reader’s copy through NetGalley.