Victoria Trumbull Books In Order

Publication Order of Victoria Trumbull/Martha's Vineyard Mystery Books

The Victoria Trumbull series is a series of popular cozy mystery books written by one of the renowned novelists from The United States named Cynthia Riggs. This series is comprised of a total of 12 books, which were released between the years 2001 and 2016. All the novels in this series feature the chief protagonist in the role of Victoria Trumbull, who is described as a 92 year old astute woman and a deputy police officer. She is a Vineyard native living in Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. In spite of being so old, Victoria Trumbull things that she is still a 20 year old girl. She seems to have the tendency of paying attention to even the minutest details and possesses a razor sharp mind. Author Cynthia has set the stories on Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. Due to this reason, the series is also known by the title, Martha’s Vineyard Mysteries. During the course of the series, it is seen that Victoria does not let the pains and aches of her old age prevent her from investigating about the mysteries around her. She appears to be a highly determined woman, who tries to finish whatever she takes up. Author Cynthia took the inspiration to develop this character from the life of her own mother named Dionis Coffin Riggs, who she says was a hard-working woman going on to live till the age of 98 years. Author Cynthia began writing this series in the year 2001 and came up with its debut book, Deadly Nightshade, in the same year. Currently, the mystery series is still going on. Author Cynthia has said in her interviews that she has planned to write a total of 20 books in this series, after which she will retire permanently from her writing career.

One of the most famous books of the Victoria Trumbull series is entitled ‘The Cranefly Orchid Murders’. It was released by the Minotaur publication in 2002. At the beginning of this book, Victoria Trumbull is shown as being a citizen of Martha’s Vineyard, an island in Massachusetts. Being a native of the place, she seems to know much more about the place as well as its people than any other person living around. This knowledge has already helped her to solve an intriguing murder case. Due to this, she has earned herself a baseball cap and a job as a police deputy. Victoria Trumbull knows a woman living on the island with the name Phoebe Eldridge, who is known to be a short tempered woman. Phoebe lives alone and does not like to talk about her granddaughter at all. She does not even like to mention her son, who was a Vietname veteran and has gone missing a few years ago. Feeling the need for money to cater for the needs of her life, Phoebe decides to sell her family land. And when a developer approaches Phoebe Eldrige with an offer, she seems unable to resist it and agrees to go for the deal. The government authorities believe that the land consists of some endangered species of plants.

As the state does not allow bulldozing the habitats of such plants, The Trust for Conservation appoints Victoria Trumbull to look for any such plants on the entire land. Victoria seems to be only one who cannot be suspected of foul play. When she learns about this new task assigned to her, Victoria becomes delighted as she feels that it will add a new objective to her long walks. In order to assist her in the search, Victoria enlists a 11 year old after school kid. The first thing that she goes on to discover is the dead body of Montgomery Mausz, who was the dubious attorney for the developer. Victoria thinks of a number of suspects, but she remains more focused on her initial task. And when she comes across some cranefly orchids, she gets rewarded for her efforts. During the course of the search, Victoria Trumbull and her assistant pass through a lot of adventures that delights them very much. However, more than the delights they come across scaring events that they had never thought of facing. Overall, the story appears to a charming and thrilling one, having its share of suspense and thrills. It made the readers keep their fingers crossed as the plot progressed. The unique story and interesting writing style of author Cynthia also added to the success of the book as it went on to gather numerous readers from all over the world.

The next popular book to have been published in the series by Minotaur Books is titled as ‘The Cemetery Yew’. In this book, author Cynthia has mentioned another intriguing mystery in which Victoria Trumbull gets involved and makes attempts to unravel it. The opening sequence shows that the police chief of West Tisbury made Victoria Trumbull his deputy officially for some specific reasons. One of them is that she knows everything about the town and the people inside out. She is even aware of the ancestors of Martha’s Vineyard. Quite often, Victoria suffers from the aches & pains due to her aging, but she uses a cutoff shoe and a stick to help her during her walks in the fields around the town. She is still as sharp as a young and much more efficient than anyone else. This is the reason why the police chief listens to her when she points out something strange in the gravestones of the cemetery. When a family decides to relocate the coffin of their relative, things begin to go wrong from the very beginning. At first, the driver chosen to carry the coffin disappears in the rainstorm. This is followed by a few more deaths and possible murders. At last, when the coffin is actually found, the relatives become shocked to find that the expected body is not there in it. Later, the coffin itself goes missing.

In the meantime, Victoria rents one of the bedrooms of her house to her neighbor’s relative, who boards in along with her spoilt bird. Even though Victoria didn’t want them in her house, she seems rather helpless about it. She remains graceful towards them, but they begin to interfere with her column writing for a local newspaper. The unwanted guests also interfere with the investigation related to the strange coffin antics and the murders. Victoria tries to find out whether the coffin events and the murders are related. Once again, Victoria Trumbull appears to be a delightful and realistic nonagenarian person. In spite of growing old, her intelligence and sharp wit have not been blunted. The people of Martha’s Vineyard consider themselves lucky to have someone like her around who knows a lot. With the help of her vast knowledge, Victoria tries to solve the mysteries and makes attempts to maintain peace in the town.