Part of Series
The picturesque little town of Alpine in the foothills of Washington’s Cascade Mountains is no longer the rough-and-ready logging camp of yesteryear. So when a drunken brawl at the Icicle Creek Tavern leaves a loner named Alvin De Muth dead, the residents feel as if they’ve gone back to the Bad Old Days. The inquiry into the unfortunate incident should be a no-brainer. There are plenty of witnesses to the fatal fight, but since most of them were half-tanked at the time, Sheriff Milo Dodge is left scratching his head over a fistful of conflicting stories. Luckily for Emma Lord, editor and publisher of The Alpine Advocate, the news breaks just before the paper’s Wednesday deadline, so for once she can give the radio station some real competition. But soon she has an even bigger story to report: a heartbreaking highway accident that leaves two people dead and a likable young local on life support. From Front Street to River Road, from Stella’s Styling Salon to the Burger Barn, rumors are flying. Are the two tragedies linked in some inexplicable way? Was De Muth a mentor or a menace to Alpine’s teenage boys? What compels an ethereal female to visit Emma and insist that De Muth’s self-confessed killer is innocent? And (much to Emma’s chagrin) is it true that the sheriff is about to rewed his ex? Emma senses that there’s a story behind the story and is determined to uncover the truth. Assisted by that human bulldozer Vida Runkel, the Advocate’s House & Home editor, Emma goes for the gold.
Author
Seattle native Mary Richardson Daheim has been fascinated by story-telling since early childhood. She first listened, then read, and finally began to write her own fiction when she was ten. A journalism major at the University of Washington, she was the first female editor of The Daily where she attracted national attention with her editorial stance against bigotry. After getting her B.A., she worked in newspapers and public relations, but in her spare time she tried her hand at novels. In 1983, Daheim’s first historical romance was published, followed by a half-dozen more before she switched genres to her original fictional love, mysteries. Just Desserts and Fowl Prey, the first books of thirty in the Bed-and-Breakfast series were released in 1991. A year later, the Emma Lord series made its debut with The Alpine Advocate. Daheim has also written several short stories for mystery anthologies and magazines. Married to professor emeritus and playwright David Daheim, the couple lives in Seattle and has three grown daughters. She has been an Agatha Award nominee, winner of the 2000 Pacific Northwest Writers Association Achievement Award, and her mysteries regularly make the USA Today bestseller list and the New York Times top thirty.
