Last Scene Alive

This is #7 in the Aurora Teagarden series by Charlaine Harris. Aurora is still sunk in the gray landscape of loss from the death of her husband Martin (see previous post for A Fool and His Honey). Apparently, her former writer friend, Robin Crusoe, has optioned one of his books--loosely based on a series of murders that occurred in Lawrenceton, which Aurora helped the police to solve. As a result, a film company is coming to town and some "B" level starlet--who may or may not still be involved with Robin--is going to play the Aurora-based character in the movie. Aurora does not want to have anything to do with it, and struggles not to take it personally when friends in town get involved in and excited about the the making of the movie. Of course, the actress playing Aurora gets murdered, and Aurora will have to find the killer or risk suffering the same fate. On the bright side, the flame seems to have been rekindled with Robin and Aurora begins to see a light at the end of her dark tunnel of mourning. Well done, fast-paced read.

A Fool and His Honey

This is book #6 in the "Aurora Teagarden" series by Charlaine Harris. I have not read these in order but found a couple of them in the "Friends" shop at the public library and I have really enjoyed her other series with Lily Bard and Sookie Stackhouse. In this book, Aurora is married to Martin, and although she no longer needs to work, she is back to being a part-time librarian at the public library in the the Atlanta bedroom community of Lawrenceton. One afternoon she answers the front door and is met by Martin's niece, Regina, carrying her new baby, Hayden. Aurora and Martin have a dinner engagement that evening and when they return, they find, Regina missing and her husband, Craig, lying dead on the stairs leading to the garage apartment. The baby is found safely hidden under the bed in the apartment. Inside, they find a groggy Rory,  Craig's best friend, sleeping behind the sofa in the den. Unable to reach Regina's mother (Martin's sister, Barby), who is on a cruise, and determined to get the baby with someone who can take care of him, they head to Ohio to find Craig's adoptive parents. When that doesn't work out, they decide to stay a few days at Martin's family farm, where he had been letting Regina and Craig--and apparently, Rory--live. But the person who killed Craig, and perhaps kidnapped Regina, is so desperate to find the baby, that more people will die. As with all Harris' characters and books, no one is free of dark character flaws, nor are the endings always happy. Still, she is a good writer, the plots are tight, the characters and sense of place are well-developed. No regrets at reading this one.

King of the Mountain

I only know M.K. Wren from reading her post-apocalyptic novel, A Gift Upon the Shore, so was surprised to find that she has a whole series of mysteries with a PI protagonist named Conan Flagg. Flagg also owns a bookstore on the coast of Oregon, and he is loathe to leave it just now, but his friend, Lise King, has pleaded with him to join her family for her father's annual birthday get together at his lodge in the mountains east of Portland. The trip brings together wealthy timber man A.C.King, his relatively new and much younger wife, and his 3 sons, at least two of whom appear to have some significant conflicts with A.C. Part of the annual celebration involves A.C. and his sons hiking up the mountain to camp out overnight.  One son is staying behind at the lodge, ostensibly with an injured ankle. Conan is invited to join the camp out, and it is only A.C.'s snoring which wakes Conan and sends him wandering out of camp to look at the stars, minutes before a landslide buries the campsite and--presumably--A.C. and two of his sons.  Conan races down the mountain as a freak blizzard moves in and barely survives hypothermia in getting back to the lodge to deliver the sad news. Conan is sure he heard a separate explosion moments before the landslide started and he thinks this is an elaborately plotted murder, not an accident of nature. That means somebody at the lodge is involved, and Conan means to find out who. Everyone has a motive--most of them centered around money. If you enjoy reading books set in the Pacific Northwest and like a decently wrought mystery, this would be an enjoyable choice.

Lucky You

I have not read anything by Carl Hiaasen in a while and forgot how he makes me laugh out loud with his outrageous characters and dialogue. Bode and Chub, two ne'er do wells--also would-be anti-government militia--win the Florida lottery. The only thing is, someone else did, too, and that means they only get $14 m instead of $28 m. They decide to find the other winner and steal the ticket. They accomplish their goal, beating up a proud young black woman, JoLayne Lucks, who works as a veterinary assistant and had wanted to use her winnings to save a piece of land that is soon to be bulldozed by developers. She loves the land and the animals that live there; this is along the same lines as many of Hiaasen's other books with semi-environmental activist themes. Tom Krome, a jaded newspaper reporter sent to cover JoLayne's winning the lottery by his incompetent and idiotic editor, finds himself in the middle of JoLayne's quest to find the two brutal sociopaths and get her ticket back. When Krome goes off the grid, and his house gets blown up with somebody's body inside, the newspaper sends the features editor to check up on Krome. Said editor has a religious conversion, after an encounter with tiny turtles in the town of Grange, a place known for religious miracles and the shysters who create them. Other characters include Krome's actress wife who refuses to divorce him, the waitress from Hooters with whom Chub falls in love, the convenience store clerk who sold JoLayne the winning ticket and then denied it in order to join Chub and Bode in the militia, and the various eccentrics living in the town of Grange. Hiaasen's humor is dark, but the good guys win in the end and this is a hilarious read.