The Alpine Menace (Emma Lord Series #13)

First rate addenda to an engaging series

Engaging is a very good word to describe Mary Daheim's series heroine, Emma Lord, editor-publisher of the Alpine Advocate. These delightful novels go way beyond 'cozy'. Always carefully-crafted to maintain maximal suspense, they feature a strong cast of on-going series regulars...especially peppery House-and-Home editor, Vida Runkel...who aid and abet Emma in whatever cause she chooses to undertake, so it always feels like old-home-week no matter what the latest caper may involve. THE ALPINE MENACE finds Emma and Vida both out of their territory and, at least temporarily, out of their depth. When Vida learns that former Alpine native Carol Stokes has been murdered in Seattle and her live-in boyfriend, Emma's long-lost cousin Ronnie, placed under arrest as number-one suspect in her killing, she insists that a reluctant Emma accompany her posthaste to the scene of the crime in order to insure that justice will be served. As is frequently the case in Ms. Daheim's novels, the police are so confident that they have the right man that Emma and Vida...equally convinced that the hapless Ronnie is simply a victim of circumstances and his own ineptitude...are forced to launch their own investigation to find another suspect. During the course of it, our heroines must unravel a tangled skein of family secrets which eventually leads to a second murder and their own far too close encounter of the hair-raising kind with a cold-blooded killer before the frame can be proved, the real guilty party, uncovered and veni...vidi...VIDA! Cudos! to Ms. Daheim for so adroitly balancing some essentially unsympathetic central characters...victim and suspect...against two such 'engaging' sleuths in an absolutely intriguing yet ultimately oh-so-logical series of plot complications that kept me guessing right down to the wire.

Excellent Emma Lord mystery

Emma Lord has owned and operated Washington State¿s Alpine-Advocate for over a decade. Nearing fifty, Emma has covered more stories, solved several homicides, and has scooped her peers more often than she would like to remember.

Currently, she has the inside track to a Seattle murder that leaves her quite uneasy since the suspect is her dimwitted cousin Ronnie, a person she has not seen in about three decades. Ronnie is accused of killing his live-in girl friend. When Emma, at the instigation or encouragement, depending on the perspective of House and Home editor Vida Runkel, visits Ronnie at jail, she concludes he is too laid back to kill anyone. Emma and Vida begin their own style of investigating especially because the police are looking at Ronnie only in spite of the suspect¿s airtight alibi. However, finding the guilty party proves difficult and dangerous as the culprit prefers Ronnie receive credit for the deed.

THE ALPINE MENACE is a very intricate mystery so that it is nearly impossible to determine the identity of the killer. The victim is not likable, as she was the poster girl for ¿trailer trash¿ with many people wishing her dead. Thus, the audience performs a real mental workout trying to identify the perpetrator. Mary Daheim is dependable when it comes to a well-written mystery, but this novel is one of her best tales.

Harriet Klausner

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