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DEAD RAPUNZEL
by Victoria Houston
Tyrus, June 2015
208 pages
$24.99
ISBN: 1440568499


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

In the dead of winter in Wisconsin, it's easy enough to slip and fall. When a wealthy widow does, it's thought to be just incredibly bad luck that she is hit and killed by a logging truck. Doesn't happen all the time, but it's not outside the realm of probability. There's just one small problem with this convenient theory: there is a witness who claims he saw somebody push her. Once Doc Osborne definitely identifies the woman as Rudd Tomlinson, Chief Lew Ferris begins to ask questions, just in case Rudd was pushed.

The family, such as it is, is not really interested in co-operating. The woman Rudd worked with, who is now also the executor of the considerable estate, tends to believe that Rudd's death was not accidental. This view is much more difficult to ignore when the body of the witness is found drowned in Loon Lake. The behavior of Rudd's family - none related by blood, just by marriage - tend to reinforce Lew's feeling that Rudd was killed. There isn't one person in the family who really liked Rudd, or was happy with what she had planned for their father's estate.

Houston has been writing about Doc Osborne, his love interest in the fishing police chief, and the rest of the denizens of Loon Lake for well over a decade. Followers of the series are well acquainted with Doc's back story, and that of most of the major characters; this makes life easier for Houston in terms of being able to concentrate on the current story without having to do a lot of filling in. Readers new to Loon Lake are at a disadvantage, which is easily remedied by picking up a few of Houston's previous books. One doesn't have to be a fishing aficionado to enjoy Loon Lake. It's just (pardon the pun) a good hook on which Houston can hang a romance and some amusing characters; it's less and less important as the series goes on.

This is definitely a character-driven series, and Houston is usually very good at/with characters. For some reason, DEAD RAPUNZEL is not one of her better attempts. Dysfunctional doesn't begin to cover the Tomlinson offspring. Almost all the non-series people are very unpleasant in one way or another. For whatever reason, the story and the characterization weren't enough to bring Loon Lake to life this time around. Anyone who has lived through a northern mid-western winter (or two or three or a dozen) will know that the setting wasn't a pleasant bonus. Every series writer is probably entitled to a book on the low end of the bell curve; DEAD RAPUNZEL still passes, but not by much.

§ P.J. Coldren lives in northern lower Michigan where she reads and reviews widely across the mystery genre when she isn't working in her local hospital pharmacy.

Reviewed by P.J. Coldren, July 2015

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