The Alpine Traitor

This part of the "Emma Lord" series by Mary Daheim that is set in the fictional town of Alpine, somewhere out Hiway 2 towards Stevens Pass in Washington state. Having lived in Seattle 18 years, I was attracted because I like reading books set in surroundings I might recognize and I had heard positive reviews of this author. I would say this is competent but not outstanding. I found little things irritating like the fact that the sheriff, Milo, never walks, strolls or ambles, but always lopes out of the room. Not being really sure what that looked like, I checked with dictionary.com and found that, although usually applied to quadrapeds, it can apply to a person and conveys "with a long, easy stride." OK, fair enough, but pick another verb to use once in a while.
To the plot. Apparently, Emma Lord had a son, now a priest in his 30's, with a married man, Tom Cavanaugh. When he left his wife, who was mentally unbalanced, Tom and Emma renewed their relationship and were on the verge of getting married when he was killed. That was about 5 years ago. Emma is the owner of the town's weekly newspaper and has about 4 people working for her. Out of the blue, she receives a call, ostensibly from the husband of her deceased fiance's daughter, making an offer to buy the paper. According to this caller, the Cavanaugh children and their spouses want to buy the paper because they are expanding the newspaper empire left to them by their father, Tom. Emma is adamant that she is not interested in selling. Then this person turns up dead. Except it turns out he wasn't really the person he claimed to be, and said husband is alive and well. Meanwhile though the Cavanaugh children and spouses have started converging on Alpine. Emma makes efforts to talk with them but this seems to go nowhere. One of her employees is the next to be shot, although not killed. The plot is complicated by yet another revelation that someone is not who they claim to be. There are certainly a lot of colorful characters and I suspect if you read a number of these books, they would get to seem like old friends. However, there was not enough appealing about this book to send me in search of more in the series. Recommended only if you don't have something else you would rather read.