From Publishers Weekly
Sometimes you have to take matters into your own hands. Especially if you're the editor of a small-town weekly newspaper faced with an unsolved murder and a fast-approaching deadline, as is the case with Emma Lord, heroine of the sixth novel in the Alpine series (after The Alpine Escape). The Pacific Northwest town of Alpine is already suffering from the demise of the logging industry, so when a visitor from the Bank of Washington starts a flurry of rumors that the town's only bank may be heading for a merger, the matter is of special interest to Emma and the staff of the Advocate. Emma investigates, but the matter gets complicated when the bank's bookkeeper, daughter of its owner, is murdered. Emma is joined in her search by Vida Runkel, her best friend and house-and-garden editor. Vida is also a gossip, a valuable commodity in a small town, and Emma is barely able to keep up as Vida weaves her way through the intricate relationships of Alpine's denizens to ferret out the information needed to solve the case. The book's small-town ambiance makes a good contrast to this high-finance, very '80s mystery. The town's quirky characters, from the millionaire who wants to form citizen detective teams to the sheriff who wants to become more cultured, add a nice, honest feel to the tale. Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.


Book Description
BANK ON MURDER
For generations the venerable family-owned bank has served the old logging town in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains. But suddenly Marv Peterson, bank president and family patriarch, seems unnaturally distracted; his heirs and employees are jittery. And when a banker from Seattle comes to town, allegedly on a fishing vacation, Emma Lord, editor and publisher of The Alpine Advocate, decides to do a bit of fishing herself.
Abetted by her unsinkable house-and-home editor, Emma snoops for a story and ends up investigating murder--the strangling death of the bank's sexy blonde bookkeeper after a rendezvous at a local motel. Did she die because of whom she knew or what she knew? Sheriff Milo Dodge hasn't a clue, but Emma and The Advocate get set to roll with the shocking reality and the biggest story in history....



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
BANK ON MURDER
For generations the venerable family-owned bank has served the old logging town in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains. But suddenly Marv Peterson, bank president and family patriarch, seems unnaturally distracted; his heirs and employees are jittery. And when a banker from Seattle comes to town, allegedly on a fishing vacation, Emma Lord, editor and publisher of The Alpine Advocate, decides to do a bit of fishing herself.
Abetted by her unsinkable house-and-home editor, Emma snoops for a story and ends up investigating murder--the strangling death of the bank's sexy blonde bookkeeper after a rendezvous at a local motel. Did she die because of whom she knew or what she knew? Sheriff Milo Dodge hasn't a clue, but Emma and The Advocate get set to roll with the shocking reality and the biggest story in history....

FROM THE PUBLISHER

BANK ON MURDER
For generations the venerable family-owned bank has served the old logging town in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains. But suddenly Marv Peterson, bank president and family patriarch, seems unnaturally distracted; his heirs and employees are jittery. And when a banker from Seattle comes to town, allegedly on a fishing vacation, Emma Lord, editor and publisher of The Alpine Advocate, decides to do a bit of fishing herself.
Abetted by her unsinkable house-and-home editor, Emma snoops for a story and ends up investigating murder—the strangling death of the bank's sexy blonde bookkeeper after a rendezvous at a local motel. Did she die because of whom she knew or what she knew? Sheriff Milo Dodge hasn't a clue, but Emma and The Advocate get set to roll with the shocking reality and the biggest story in history....

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly