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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Sinister Sort by L.M. Harper

May 3, 2024 By Leave a Comment


Sinister Sort by L.M. Harper
Publisher: Self-published
Genre: Cozy Mystery, Contemporary
Rating: 4 stars
Reviewed by Snowdrop

Miranda Vincent thought East Syracuse was the perfect place to sort out her life. A host of friends, both old and new, welcomed Miranda back to the town where she grew up. She landed a job in the mail room at Crane Community College and the perfect apartment.

Life is starting to look up for Miranda except for one major issue. Her new coworker, Hadley Mitchell, thought Miranda’s new job should have been hers and Hadley aims to cancel Miranda’s stamp. When Hadley turns up dead, all eyes are on Miranda.

Can Miranda figure out who killed Hadley and deliver justice? Or will she find herself in a permanent hold?

You know that uncomfortable feeling of getting a job that a current employee feels they should have gotten? Miranda was excited to get a job in the mail room, but Hadley was mad, really mad. Snotty and mean too. She was sure she was a shoo-in, then they hired Miranda, and she wasn’t even connected to Crane Community College. When things didn’t work out her way, Hadley did everything possible to undermine Miranda. Miranda was visibly aggravated about Haley and even though she shouldn’t have, she might have complained loudly to a lot of people. Then, when you’re found leaning over the body, it just doesn’t look good.

This is a quick, easy-to-read cozy. It’s a good mystery, and one of the reasons I enjoyed it the most was L. M. Harper’s characters. Well, maybe I didn’t like snotty Hayley but then again that’s good character definition too:)

This is your typical cozy with what I’ll call all the normal elements…an amateur sleuth, someone suffering from a love-life trauma, a handsome cop, a dead body, etc. It is not, however, a carbon copy of other cozies. It has dear friends, an adorable pet, a few more twists and turns, and it does leave you wondering who the bad guy/girl might be until the end.

A fun read. Looks like L.M. Harper only has one other book. Hope she writes some more.

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

Hardback Homicide by S. E. Babin

November 27, 2023 By Leave a Comment


Hardback Homicide by S. E. Babin
Publisher: S.E. Babin, Amazon Digital Services
Genre: Cozy Mystery, Contemporary
Rating: 5 stars
Reviewed by Snowdrop

When a rare book order leads me right to a homicide, somehow I’m the one investigating…

I’m Dakota Adair, owner of Tattered Pages, a bookstore specializing in cool and quirky books. I inherited a grumpy Persian cat named Poppy who loves to make her displeasure known around the store … loudly. Things are good until I deliver a special order only to stumble over a body. Suddenly all eyes are on me. Now I have a handsome detective and an annoying reporter on my tail, hounding me about the case.

All I want to do is crack open my favorite paperback, grab a cup of coffee, and chill, but with a murderer out there and suspicion falling on me, I have to do a lot more than read. I have to find out whodunnit and quick before I become the next subject of a murder mystery…

Hardback Homicide is the 1st book in a series titled “Shelf Indulgence”. This was fun reading. Even the series name is fun. It had what I call all the “elements” of a cozy, a cute town name (Dewdrop Springs), an amateur sleuth, a handsome cop, a bookshop, books, a cat, and of course, a dead body.

I enjoyed this story, but the quirky characters of the town might be what clinched it. Dakota, the bookshop owner, and her assistant, Harper, sell books for all ages, but they also deal in rare books. This is where greed sets in, and it becomes awfully hard to tell who has their hands on the infamous book.

Lots of fun, easy reading, and good characters. What more can I say? I can say this series has 5 books so far, and I intend to read them all.

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Murder in the Storybook Cottage by Ellery Adams

October 9, 2023 By Leave a Comment


Murder in the Storybook Cottage by Ellery Adams
Publisher: Kensington Cozies
Genre: Cozy Mystery, Contemporary
Rating: 5 stars
Review by Snowdrop

Storyton Hall, Virginia, is a top travel destination for book lovers and the perfect spot for literary events. But as a children’s book publisher hosts a gathering there, some folks aren’t going to live—happier ever after or otherwise . . .

Jane Steward’s resort is hopping—not only is Peppermint Press’s conference in full swing, there are also lots of families staying on the premises, bringing their kids to events like a scavenger hunt through the Fairy Tale Forest.

Then a woman dressed like Little Red Riding Hood is found dead from a plot device straight out of a fairy tale—with a rare and valuable copy of Grimm’s Fairy Tales in her basket. Not long after, a second victim is killed, with yet another treasure—a volume by Hans Christian Andersen worth thousands of dollars—nearby. It looks like a big bad wolf may be lurking among the guests, and Jane can’t just wait for a handsome prince to come to the rescue .

This wasn’t just your usual cozy mystery. It was your Ellery Adams usual cozy mystery. I don’t think there has ever been a book she’s written that I didn’t enjoy. In this 6th book of the Book Retreat Mystery series, Jane has gone all out to entertain both publishers of children’s books as well as authors who write children’s books. As always Ellery’s description gives you a total picture of Storyton Hall. It’s like a wonderland for the children, but as usual…someone has to be murdered in order to have a cozy mystery. While the murder puts a bit of a damper on the huge party, most of the guests are shielded while Jane and her Finns help the sheriff find the bad guy or girl.

I said I liked everything Ellery Adams has written, and it is the truth. However, in this book, it seemed as if Jane was unusually traumatized at finding a dead body. It sure isn’t like it’s the first time in this series. It just seemed reiterated over and over, how upset she was, how could she manage to look happy, how could she make sure her guests enjoyed themselves. She had to sit and have tea very often to recover. I sound like I’m being facetious here but I’m not. I preferred the occasionally upset, but very strong Jane in the earlier books.

That said, it was a little bump in my enjoyment and I still wouldn’t miss a book.

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