ASPEN, COLORADO (Post Time News)–The second time around has been even better than the first for Aspen mystery writer Catherine O’Connell.

The second time around, O’Connell’s book “Well Bred and Dead: A High Society Mystery” (HarperCollins) went into a second printing on the very first day of publication last week. The prestitigious Kirkus Reviews called it “a wry look at the lifestyles of the rich and an amusing mystery with a twist in its tail.” Other reviews have been equally complementary.

“Give yourself a treat,” says the writer Frank McCourt. “Settle down with ‘Well Bred and Dead.’ Let the world go by while you drift into Catherine O’Connell’s Chicago – a world of vivid characters (mainly female) who are so rich, so delicate, so tough they never order the same wine twice. Ms. O’Connell is, quite simply, a hell of a storyteller, a master of plot, a tart observer of the social scene. All this is spun out in a prose that hums along to a conclusion that leaves you gasping.”

O’Connell is a fixture in the Aspen literary world as a member of the board of the Aspen Writers’ Foundation (AWF)–and the moderator of the Tuesday evening AWF writer’s group at the Red Brick Center for the Arts in Aspen. 

The first time around for O’Connell in the publishing whirl was thirteen years ago, when her mystery “Skins” was published by Donald I. Fine, one of the last of the independent publishers, just before he sold out. O’Connell kept writing over the intervening years–a baker’s dozen of frustration–before she finally broke through with the high-society yarn set in the toniest neighborhoods of her native Chicago.