Twanged
(Books)

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.