From Publishers Weekly
Daheim's ( Holy Terrors ) amateur-sleuth whodunits unfortunately recycle well-worn elements: mistaken identities, long-hidden secrets, convoluted familial relationships and heavy-handed clues. Even a new heroine, newspaper publisher Emma Lord, and a change in locale, here the mythical small town of Alpine, Wash., can't rescue this ho-hum mystery. Chris Martinez, black sheep of the rich and powerful Doukas clan, has returned to Alpine for the first time since he was a boy. Soon his cousin Mark Doukas is bludgeoned to death, with the alienated Chris the leading suspect. Then Emma's deliveryman, Gibb Frazier, is murdered, followed shortly by the discovery of a skeleton in an abandoned mine shaft--which proves to be the remains of Chris's long-lost father. Emma, ably assisted by town historian/gossip Vida Runkel, must unravel the tangled relationships that link virtually every inhabitant of Alpine in order to solve the murders. Despite the complex game of "who-married-whom-and-who-had-whose-child," readers will have no trouble spotting clues, as Daheim appears to do everything in her power to call attention to them short of printing them in capital letters. Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.


Book Description
The debut of the Emma Lord murder mystery series.
After a year as publisher-editor of the Alpine Advocate, Emma Lord feels fine about her move to this small town in the foothills of Washington's Cascade Mountains. What she really needs for her paper, though, is a big story. And she gets it--when handsome Mark Doukas, grandson of rich, old Neeny Doukas is murdered. Emma discovers that trying to get straight answers out of Neeny and his thin-lipped son is like poking a nest of sleeping rattlesnakes. What begins with an innocent story about the murdered man, ends with Emma conducting the most interesting, and probably the last, interview of her career from the wrong end of a .38....



From the Publisher
Mary Daheim and I go back a long way -- well, seventeen or eighteen years. That's a long time for a publishing association. Years before I became Mary's editor on the Emma Lord/Alpine series for Ballantine, I was an editorial assistant at another trade house -- and that's where we met, long distance. She lives in Seattle; I live in New York; even eighteen year ago, the phone lines stretched in both directions. At the time Mary was writing successful historical romances for my then-boss, a senior editor. One day Mary and I revealed our unbridled passion for reading crime fiction. Little did I dream then that, soon after I arrived at Ballantine, Mary would become a crime writer herself. Of course, now she's a nationally renowned one . . . and I especially treasure her novels about Emma Lord, the editor-publisher of a small-town weekly newspaper in fictional (but based on fact) Alpine, Washington. The paper is called The Alpine Advocate, which is also the title of the first novel in the series. For any readers who haven't visited Alpine, I heartily recommend starting with Book One -- and then continuing forward (in alphabetical order) to THE ALPINE BETRAYAL, THE ALPINE CHRISTMAS, THE ALPINE DECOY, THE ALPINE ESCAPE, THE ALPINE FURY, THE ALPINE GAMBLE, THE ALPINE HERO, THE ALPINE ICON, THE ALPINE JOURNEY, and (coming soon) THE ALPINE KINDRED.

--Joe Blades, Associate Publisher


From the Inside Flap
The debut of the Emma Lord murder mystery series.
After a year as publisher-editor of the Alpine Advocate, Emma Lord feels fine about her move to this small town in the foothills of Washington's Cascade Mountains. What she really needs for her paper, though, is a big story. And she gets it--when handsome Mark Doukas, grandson of rich, old Neeny Doukas is murdered. Emma discovers that trying to get straight answers out of Neeny and his thin-lipped son is like poking a nest of sleeping rattlesnakes. What begins with an innocent story about the murdered man, ends with Emma conducting the most interesting, and probably the last, interview of her career from the wrong end of a .38....

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The debut of the Emma Lord murder mystery series.
After a year as publisher-editor of the Alpine Advocate, Emma Lord feels fine about her move to this small town in the foothills of Washington's Cascade Mountains. What she really needs for her paper, though, is a big story. And she gets it—when handsome Mark Doukas, grandson of rich, old Neeny Doukas is murdered. Emma discovers that trying to get straight answers out of Neeny and his thin-lipped son is like poking a nest of sleeping rattlesnakes. What begins with an innocent story about the murdered man, ends with Emma conducting the most interesting, and probably the last, interview of her career from the wrong end of a .38....

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Daheim's ( Holy Terrors ) amateur-sleuth whodunits unfortunately recycle well-worn elements: mistaken identities, long-hidden secrets, convoluted familial relationships and heavy-handed clues. Even a new heroine, newspaper publisher Emma Lord, and a change in locale, here the mythical small town of Alpine, Wash., can't rescue this ho-hum mystery. Chris Martinez, black sheep of the rich and powerful Doukas clan, has returned to Alpine for the first time since he was a boy. Soon his cousin Mark Doukas is bludgeoned to death, with the alienated Chris the leading suspect. Then Emma's deliveryman, Gibb Frazier, is murdered, followed shortly by the discovery of a skeleton in an abandoned mine shaft--which proves to be the remains of Chris's long-lost father. Emma, ably assisted by town historian/gossip Vida Runkel, must unravel the tangled relationships that link virtually every inhabitant of Alpine in order to solve the murders. Despite the complex game of ``who-married-whom-and-who-had-whose-child,'' readers will have no trouble spotting clues, as Daheim appears to do everything in her power to call attention to them short of printing them in capital letters. (Dec.)

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING