Gone Crazy by Terry Korth Fischer

April 7, 2025 By Leave a Comment


Gone Crazy by Terry Korth Fischer
Publisher: The Wild Rose Press
Genre: Mystery/Suspense/Thriller, Contemporary
Rating: 5 stars
Reviewed by Snowdrop

A formal declaration of love scares the bejesus out of small-town Detective Rory Naysmith. As Valentine’s Day approaches, he evaluates his relationship with bookkeeper Esther Mullins, and decides to take her on a romantic date that ends with a poet’s murder. Assigned to the case, Rory pushes his private life aside. Things gets tricky after Esther is appointed Executrix for the estate—then rumors start that place a priceless item among the poet’s many possessions.

The race is on to unearth the treasure and solve the murder, but it leaves Rory wondering if Esther will live long enough to become his Valentine—or end up as the murderer’s next victim.

It’s almost Valentine’s Day in Rory Naismith’s little town of Winterset, Nebraska, and Detective Naismith is supposed to look into a robbery at the local hardware store. He might be thinking more about what he’s going to get as a gift for his almost serious lady friend, Esther. Winterset has decided to appoint a Poet Laureate and during the reading they attend, one of the poets’ collapses. Esther runs to help her but unfortunately can’t save her. It definitely looks like foul play.

I like this Rory Naismith character so much. I like small-town cop stories, and this one fits the bill. To me this was almost a somewhat sophisticated cozy. There’s an amateur sleuth, a handsome cop, and a small town with delightful characters. Fischer has made all the characters come alive with a homey description of those very much like the real-life ones I grew up with in my small town.

I might have used the word cozy but there is nothing missing from this good mystery with lots of surprises and hidden clues. Gone Crazy is Book 3 of a series titled “Rory Naismith Mysteries”. I have read the previous Rory Naismith books and loved them just as I did this one.

Filed Under: Mystery/Suspense, Reviews Tagged With: , , , , ,

Back of Beyond by C.J. Box

March 24, 2025 By Leave a Comment


Back of Beyond by C.J. Box
Publisher: Minotaur Books
Genre: Mystery/Suspense/Thriller, Contemporary
Rating: 5 stars
Reviewed by Snowdrop

Cody Hoyt, although a brilliant cop, is an alcoholic struggling with two months of sobriety when his friend Hank Winters is found burned to death in a remote mountain cabin. At first it looks like the suicide of a man who’s fallen off the wagon, but Cody knows Hank better than that. As Cody digs deeper into the case, all roads lead to foul play. After years of bad behavior with his department, Cody is in no position to be investigating a homicide, but he will stop at nothing to find Hank’s killer.

When clues found at the scene link the murderer to an outfitter leading tourists on a multiday wilderness horseback trip into the remote corners of Yellowstone National Park—a pack trip that includes his son Justin—Cody is desperate to get on their trail and stop the killer before the group heads into the wild. In a fatal cat-and-mouse game, where it becomes apparent the murderer is somehow aware of Cody’s every move, Cody treks into the wilderness to stop a killer hell-bent on destroying the only important thing left in his life.

Back of Beyond is C.J. Box’s first book in the Cody Hoyt series. Cody is a cop with a past littered with hard liquor and a reputation as an alcoholic. But he’s a good cop and most everyone knows it. One of the people who believed in him was his AA sponsor Hank, and Hank is found dead in an old burned-out cabin. While it might look like carelessness to some, Cody knows in his heart Hank was killed.

C.J. Box has created one of his believable, interesting characters in Cody Hoyt. In every book I have read by Box, there is a character that you grow to care about and want to succeed, one that makes your heart hurt to see them struggle. He’s simply great at creating them. This series is set in Yellowstone and Cody thinks his killer is mixed in with a group that is taking a rough camping tour. A tour with plenty of dangers, but none more so than the realization that Cody’s own son is on the tour.

This is a big book. I don’t think the author ever wrote anything else. It might move a little slow occasionally, but it is worth reading every word.

Filed Under: Mystery/Suspense, Reviews Tagged With: , , , ,

Thursday Thoughts: March 13, 2025

March 13, 2025 By 5 Comments

Thursday Thoughts: March 13, 2025

Sometimes my brain just gets tired of thinking “what to fix for dinner”.

I love to experiment so always have some new recipes each week, but if I have some items on hand, I can always throw something together.

I’m also what I call a lazy cook. I prep everything that I can and use it for meals during the week. I wash and cut up lots of veggies, squash, bell peppers, carrots, onion, head lettuce, and baby spinach as an idea.

These become my big salads with chicken and veggies, my stir-frys, my small salads to go with a pizza, my baked potatoes topped with veggies in cheese sauce. Well, the choices are endless. What I don’t use, except for lettuce, goes into the freezer for more stir-frys, soups, quiches, etc.

Here’s my weekend prep:

Firstly, I’m very picky about my produce. So if something looks limp or ugly at the store, I improvise with a different veggie. Anyway, the ones below are my favs.

After shopping:

Wash and cut:
3 or 4 yellow squash in bite-size pieces
3 or 4 zucchini in bite-sized pieces
3 or 4 sweet bell peppers (whatever colors are nice). I vary the colors. It’s good to mix them.
3 or 4 big carrots, wash and peel then cut in carrot stick size for eating with dip.
1 medium onion, peeled and cut in a large dice.
2 heads of iceberg lettuce, not torn or cut. I pull the leaves apart but don’t tear, it will rust from a tear or a knife. After drying in spinner, I wrap tightly in plastic bags making sure all air is out before closing.
Boil 6 hard-boiled eggs, cool and peel and refrigerate.
1 bag of baby spinach (spin dry and store in plastic bag with paper towels)


Tell me some of your “get-ahead” ideas. I can use them. Remember? My brain gets tired 🙂

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Musings Tagged With: , ,

Seeking Justice by L.A. Dobbs

February 25, 2025 By Leave a Comment


Seeking Justice by L.A. Dobbs
Publisher: Self-published
Genre: Cozy Mystery, Contemporary
Rating: 5 stars
Reviewed by Snowdrop

When a prominent naturalist is found dead in the owl sanctuary, the suspect list includes some of the town’s most influential citizens. Each one is up to something shady, but did one commit murder to hide what they were up to?

When the case takes a sudden turn involving a secret identity, and clues intersect with the investigation into Jo’s sisters’s cold case, Sam and Jo realize they are up against something bigger than they’d imagined.

As they try to solve both cases, Jo’s desire to buy her cottage so she can stay in town has unexpected results and Kevin is wrestling with a shadowy secret of his own.

Meanwhile Lucy and Major have entered into a truce… but will it last?

I love the books in this “Sam Mason K-9 Dog” series. Actually, I like anyone who trusts a dog’s instincts like Sam does his German Shepard, Lucy. When the Mayor finds a dead person in the owl sanctuary, this case takes off. Who would shoot a little owl in an owl sanctuary? Not that the dead person lying by the owl wasn’t important too. From the start of this case it seems like one thing leads to another for Sam. The case itself seems to uncover more secrets, and the small police department has lots to handle and many possible suspects.

I’ve read another L. A. Dobbs book and enjoyed it as well as this one. While I like small town mysteries, there isn’t a lot of description about the town in his books. White Rock obviously has a Mayor since he found the victim, and we read about the various suspects and their standing in the community, but that’s about it. Somehow, it doesn’t seem to matter in these stories. He tends to focus on the crime at hand, the small police force, Lucy their smart canine, and Major the cantankerous cat. Never once did he lose my attention.

Excellent book. This one, Seeking Justice, is Book 7. It looks as if Book 8 is already out. I’m heading to get it for sure.

Filed Under: Mystery/Suspense, Reviews Tagged With: , , , ,

Breaking Point by C. J. Box

February 18, 2025 By Leave a Comment


Breaking Point by C. J. Box
Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons
Genre: Contemporary, Mystery/Suspense/Thriller
Rating: 5 stars
Review by Snowdrop

Joe Pickett always liked Butch Roberson—a hard-working local business owner whose daughter is friends with Joe’s girls. Little does he know that when Butch says he’s heading into the mountains to scout elk, he is actually going on the run.

Two EPA employees have been murdered and all signs point to Butch as the killer. Joe learns that the land Butch and his wife had bought to retire on was declared a protected wetland by the EPA, and the subsequent fines have torn the family apart. Finally, it seems, the man just cracked.

It’s an awful story, but is it the whole story? The more Joe investigates, the more he begins to wonder—and he soon finds himself in the middle of a war in which he must choose sides.

Being too busy, I’ve had to take a break from this C J Box series about Joe Pickett. This book, Breaking Point, reminded me of what I’ve been missing. This one is about the same good and honest game warden, Joe Pickett. It’s also the same Joe Pickett always in a bit of trouble. This time Joe’s pickup truck is snowed in on the top of a mountain, his government truck of course. The story finds Joe and Marybeth thinking about the need to increase their income somehow. But things go awry and Joe gets caught up in a serious search involving a family member of his daughter’s close friend. From then on…you never put the book down:)

When you know a series is being made into a TV show, you already know you most likely have a good book. The other thing you can assume is that you have great characters. How many series continue to be successful without interesting characters? The Joe Pickett books are no different. Joe’s wife and family all have distinct personalities. Joe is a larger than life person, the kind we all want to be.

Then there is the setting. If you are an outdoors person, you’ll love this story of a game warden with a wilderness territory. That brings us to the genre. These are suspense stories, almost thrillers, but to me, they have a Western flavor. A lot of this “feeling” comes from the rough and rugged territory. I’d describe some of the side characters in the same manner. Add all these elements together and you have the perfect story.

Filed Under: Mystery/Suspense, Reviews Tagged With: , , , ,

Foreword Fraud by S.E. Babin

February 12, 2025 By Leave a Comment


Foreword Fraud by S.E. Babin
Publisher: ‎ Oliver Heber Books
Genre: Cozy Mystery, Contemporary
Rating: 5 stars
Review by Snowdrop

Welcome back to Silverwood Hollow! Where the books are plentiful and the crime is cozy!

When a shady business owner winds up dead, I’m once again under the investigative spotlight of a handsome detective with nowhere to run…

After sitting in on a lecture given by a rare book trader, I’m excited to look into expanding Tattered Pages. But when the trader winds up dead the same day Cole and I attend her lecture, suspicion turns to those I care about the most.

Of course, I’m too busy running a store and caring for my grumpy Persian cat to murder anyone, but no one believes me and now I have to put on my investigative hat and find out whodunnit.

Turns out the business owner had dealings with the town’s handsome and very eligible news reporter, Cole. And Cole isn’t too happy about her leaving him in the lurch after promising him a scoop for the ages.

But Cole couldn’t possibly be guilty.

Right?

I had a lot of fun with this cute cozy. I will admit I love any story that has a bookshop in its setting. This particular bookshop, Tattered Pages, is owned by an amateur sleuth named Dakota. I use the description sleuth because it hasn’t been that long since she solved another murder.

One thing I have to say about the author is that somehow, she pulled off writing a cozy with all of the “elements” that cozies have and yet didn’t make this sleuth seem like another nosy parker was snooping into a murder. How she did that is difficult to explain. Her friend was the most likely suspect, but that isn’t unusual. She didn’t like the victim, but that’s not unusual. Somehow, being asked to help and being expected to help by the citizens of Silverwood Hollow fell normally into place.

I just hate it when a cozy is written like a carbon copy of all the others. That just isn’t true of Forward Fraud. I’m not sure I’m even explaining the reason well, but I do know you should read the book. I really enjoyed it.

Forward Fraud is Book 2 of a series titled “A Shelf Indulgence Cozy Mystery”. There are a lot of books in the series. What a great thing to discover when you like the first book you read.

Filed Under: Mystery/Suspense, Reviews Tagged With: , , , ,

Frontier Justice: A Coogan Mystery by Michael Cardwell

February 5, 2025 By Leave a Comment


Frontier Justice: A Coogan Mystery by Michael Cardwell
Frontier Series Book 1
Publisher: Self-Published
Genre: Mystery/Suspense/Thriller, Contemporary
Rating: 5 stars
Review by Snowdrop

Danny Coogan, a freshly minted Montana Fish and Game Officer and recent Afghanistan veteran, hopes to bury his demons in a simple life in the wilderness around the small town of Darwin. But his life becomes a nightmare when he is shot and left injured and alone in the freezing countryside to struggle for survival. His assailant? A local Native American, he had considered a friend, Edmund Goodrunner.

Thus begins a brutal battle of lies, deception, and revenge with drug runners, weapons dealers, kidnappers, and killers. Danny finds himself thrust into an FBI investigation and forced to juggle the threats of a dangerous domestic terrorist group that threatens every aspect of the community he loves and has vowed to protect.

Danny, along with his surrogate father, Senior Game Warden Ben Whitetail, and the local Tribal Police Chief, instill the rich flavor of rural America through poignancy and down-home humor as they struggle, each in their own way, to bring peace back to their snowy town.

Now a game warden in a rural area, Danny Coogan is learning the ropes. Working for his father Ben is an experience and his territory leans a little between the Native American reservation and the Montana wilds. Most of the time he is making sure no one is poaching, but that doesn’t last long. He soon finds himself lying on the ground with a bullet in his chest and that’s when the story begins to unfold.

I liked everything about this book. It’s one of those hard-to-put-down kind. I noticed some people made reference to a sort of C.J. Box style, and it does have that setting feel. But Cardwell has his own style, one quite different from Box. His books have a different flavor, and they are mesmerizing. I love the characters he has painted. They are from a wide spectrum of personalities, making this even more interesting.

It looks as if there is one more Coogan mystery, Frontier Outlaws. I’m headed for it but sure hope there’s another when I finish.

Filed Under: Mystery/Suspense, Reviews Tagged With: , , , ,

Backwater Bay by Steven Becker

January 31, 2025 By 1 Comment


Backwater Bay by Steven Becker
Publisher: The White Marlin Press
Genre: Mystery/Suspense/Thriller, Contemporary
Rating: 4 stars
Review by Snowdrop

How much would it take for you to kill someone close? From Bestselling Author Steven Becker comes a new mystery series: When a body is found floating in the mangroves of Biscayne National Park, Special Agent Kurt Hunter has his first real case. He’s not looking for the spotlight or notoriety—he’s had both with disastrous results. But that seems unavoidable as the trail leads him to South Beach and his introduction to the culture there is anything but comfortable. In the National Parks Service’s version of the witness protection program, Kurt quickly finds out that the pristine waters surrounding Miami are very different from the National Forest he transferred from. Follow Kurt through this new world as he unearths a crooked families greed to solve the case.

In Backwater Bay, Kurt Hunter has been placed in the Fish and Wildlife Service in The Florida Keys. It’s not a landscape nor a temperature he’s totally familiar with, but his home is in a wonderful backwater place where it’s unlikely the people who want to kill him for busting their drug ring in California will find him.

I thought this story started off slowly. It really seemed as if it was Book 2 instead of Book 1 because I was a little confused right at the beginning- like I needed to catch up. I continued to read and was rewarded with a new character that I really enjoyed. Kurt Hunter may have just seemed to be trying to learn his new job, but he’s smart and a little savvy and quite funny at times.

Backwater Bay is my first Steven Becker book. I was hoping against all hope that I liked it because there are 15 books in the series. I enjoyed it, I liked the setting, and I liked the characters. Yippee Kurt Hunter series, here I come.

Filed Under: Mystery/Suspense, Reviews Tagged With: , , , ,

Peace Like a River by Leif Enger

August 16, 2024 By Leave a Comment


Peace Like a River by Leif Enger
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
Genre: Literary Fiction, Contemporary
Rating: 4 stars
Review by Snowdrop

Raised on tales of cowboys and pirates, eleven-year-old Reuben Land has little doubt that miracles happen all around us, and that it’s up to us to “make of it what we will.” Reuben was born with no air in his lungs, and it was only when his father, Jeremiah, picked him up and commanded him to breathe that his lungs filled. Reuben struggles with debilitating asthma from then on, making him a boy who knows firsthand that life is a gift, and also one who suspects that his father is touched by God and can overturn the laws of nature.

The quiet Midwestern life of the Lands is upended when Davy, the oldest son, kills two marauders who have come to harm the family; unlike his father, he is not content to leave all matters of justice in God’s hands. The morning of his sentencing, Davy–a hero to some, a cold-blooded murderer to others–escapes from his cell, and the Lands set out in search of him. Their journey is touched by serendipity and the kindness of strangers–among them a free spirit named Roxanna, who offers them a place to stay during a blizzard and winds up providing them with something far more permanent. Meanwhile, a federal agent is trailing the Lands, convinced they know of Davy’s whereabouts.

With Jeremiah at the helm, the family covers territory far more extraordinary than even the Badlands where they search for Davy from their Airstream trailer. Sprinkled with playful nods to biblical tales, beloved classics such as Huckleberry Finn, the adventure stories of Robert Louis Stevenson, and the westerns of Zane Grey, Peace Like a River unfolds like a revelation.

At first, I thought this would be of the religious genre, a genre I do not enjoy. As it turned out, although miracles are indeed mentioned and Bible reading occurs, I’m not sure this is a story that is at all religious.

What I do know is that it is a beautifully written story of a family trying to make their way. It reminded me so much of families moving west during the Depression and yet was actually set in the sixties. A single father with three children tries to support and raise his family only to find that his daughter has been attacked by boys at school. While her father tries to be passive and forgiving, the oldest brother can think of nothing but revenge. His actions change the lives of the entire family.

This whole story is written from the POV of the younger brother. An indisposed child, very asthmatic, and often picked on due to being frail with an illness that while better treatment was on the brink of discovery, was totally misunderstood at that time. The story is of interest and the characters quite real, but the biggest attribute of this book is its writer.

The reading flows so much that I read and read and couldn’t put it down. It’s one of those “oh, just one more page” books. Recommended.

Filed Under: Mainstream Fiction, Reviews Tagged With: , , , ,

Research Can Be Murder by Caryl Janis

July 18, 2024 By Leave a Comment


Research Can Be Murder by Caryl Janis
Publisher: Wild Rose Press
Genre: Cozy Mystery, Contemporary
Rating: 4 stars
Reviewed by Snowdrop

Emma Streyt hated to admit she was bored. But her newly retired brother puts an end to that by dropping a stash of old family memorabilia on her doorstep. Cheered on by her best friend, Emma enthusiastically dives into these boxes of antique treasures. But some faded diary pages convince her that century-old jewel thefts— and maybe something worse—are tied in with their past.

Eager to dig deeper into this mysterious puzzle by doing some serious research, she settles into a neglected New York City archive with an eccentric cast of characters. But more sinister matters than history soon unfold there when a fellow researcher is murdered. And Emma’s determination to solve the case makes her a dead-center target for the killer.

This book drew me in from the first few pages. It’s true half of my career was in libraries, but somehow it is the picture of this wonderful old home made into a research study with archival materials that made me so comfortable and want to read on. The author’s description of each studious researcher had me smiling while picturing the coziness of such an institution. Heck, I wanted to go and study there.

Emma, our main character, is at loose ends and while sorting through family papers decides to research a few interesting pieces she finds. It is in this research archive and with these highly motivated bookish people that the real story begins.

My first thought of this story was that there was too much discussion of each scholar’s research, a situation that would surely make for slower reading. Somehow that wasn’t the case. My interest never wavered. It does take the author a long time to mete out the clues. I can’t quite complain about this, because I sure had no idea who the evildoer was until the last couple of chapters.

In summary, an easy read with an author excellent at crafting oddball and occasionally quirky characters combined in a good cozy mystery.

Filed Under: Mystery/Suspense, Reviews Tagged With: , , , , ,
Next Page »