Killer Summer by Ridley Pearson

Copyright: 2009
Publisher: Putnam
Genre: Mystery
Pages: 367
Challenges: None
New-to-me Author: No
Author's Website



Simple Description:
Walt Fleming, local sheriff in Sun Valley Idaho, is fishing with his nephew when he notices a wrecker going across the bridge. He finds this very very strange because they are off the beaten path and the wrecker isn't from a local company. He decides to investigate and finds a man passed out in the car that is being towed and those driving the wrecker have fled. There is a sealed, metal briefcase in with the man who was passed out. He takes this into custody but is unable to open it. When he does track down who the case was supposed to be delivered to, he finds that it contains two very expensive bottles of wine.

Soon he finds out that there are some who think the wine is a forgery. However, before he can look into that closer, he finds that his nephew is in trouble. It seems he was helping a girl run away, but when they were in her father's lear jet, three men stole the jet, kidnapping the two teenagers. Now Walt must find the two teenagers and figure out why the jet was stolen.

Now what you really want to know....my thoughts:

This is the 3rd novel with Walt Fleming. I read Killer Weekend (in 2007! wow! I thought it as lat year. haha!) and enjoyed it. I was given the opportunity to review Killer Summer and grabbed. I didn't read the 2nd in the series, you know how that is, however it didn't matter. I was still able to follow the story and think the book works fine as a stand alone.

I thought this was an excellent mystery. I enjoyed the characters and the story seemed to be constantly moving. I loved how parts of it are told from the Sheriff's view point, so you can see what is happening with the investigation and parts are told from the teenagers point of view, so you can see what they are doing to save themselves.

My only complaint, is that it never seems clear to me exactly who was behind the mastermind of stealing the wine bottles. I could have just missed that though.

But...even with a complaint, I still highly recommend this book. Not just because I like to support authors from my home town (woohoo! Go St. Louis!) but because I really enjoyed the book.

Thanks to Nicole from Authors on the Web for providing this book for review.