The Fifth Wheel

About the Book

Aging media mogul Max Vanderhoven drives his vintage horse-drawn carriage up a mountain road and plunges off a cliff to his death. Was it careless driving? Suicide? Or murder! A second ambiguous fatality follows. Widow Dulcy McGuinness, attending a conference of horse and buggy aficionados, ferrets out the answers -- and endangers herself -- by unearthing clues connecting the construction of antique carriages to compositions by Mozart. Her interactions with her own horses, two grown sons and a new lover, plus intriguing and complex familial relationships among the other characters, all play out against old-world ambience vs. modern electronic technology.

About the Author

BARBARA WEIR recently spent a decade owning an animal talent agency in NYC, providing trained animals for the media in general and for the Metropolitan Opera in particular. She has run dog and cat training seminars (NYC), directed musicals for community theatre (NJ), and judged competitions for the newly popular sport of carriage driving (nationwide). A founder-member of the American Driving Society, and President of the American Tandem Club (two horses nose to tail pulling a carriage), she lives in rural NJ with her husband, two horses and two adopted greyhounds, and is the mother of three grown children.