Alpine Advocate: An Emma Lord Mystery
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.