A Midlife Mountain Murder

[cornerofmadness]

A Midlife Mountain Murder by Julie Ecker

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This was a fun cozy mystery that makes the absolute most out of its Alaskan setting. Ecker writes Alaska as its own character in the story and with authority. Usually in books set here I find a lot of references to Ooo how dangerous it is and little else. Vicki Vandermoon's Alaska is so much more as she is finding out after her messy divorce and cross country move. Vicki takes her years in business to take her new job of helping to manage a campground and trail guiding to a new level, trying promotions like a camp picture board. Its through her job of trail guiding we get to see Alaska in all her beauty including the local flora (while hoping not to need the bear spray for the fauna).

She's dealing with the 24 hours of sunlight better than I would but I'm jealous of her leading a group of elderly RV explorers out into the wilderness. On this fateful trip, the pilot of a local helicopter tour group is also along to see if he wants to rec her company to his clients (and to provide the potential love interest we're used to seeing in cozies). When one of the men - a womanizer - goes over a cliff and dies and the police (a relative of Hot Pilot) think it might be a simple accident, Vicki feels less sure.

So she and her friend a hippie-esque woman with a dauschund partner, start looking into it before the group of RV explorers pull out for destinations unknown. Naturally Vicki is right and one of the things I liked best about this, is she isn't obnoxious in her questioning of others (a cozy turn off for me is the amateur sleuth running around like people owe her answers) and there are consequences of her snooping. The other thing I really loved about this was the ending. We're accustomed to the amateur sleuth getting in trouble at the end but in this case it would have been SO easy to fall back on Hot Pilot riding to the rescue. I won't spoil the ending but I will say it was much more satisfying than that. I really enjoyed Vicki and her friends and I'm looking forward to more of the series. This was a highly entertaining first book.



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Comments

[under_the_silk_tree]

This does sound really good. I love stories set in Alaska, especially if the author does a good job of setting the scene so you feel like you are there. Also, the fact that it doesn't fall into all the usual tropes would make a nice change. I'll have to see where I can find it!

[cornerofmadness]

In full disclosure this is by sholio on DW. She's self pubbed but I'm pretty sure you can get it on Amazon