Gretchen Sprague Death by the Thunder

Death by the Thunder

Gretchen Sprague

St. Martin's, Nov 2005, $24.95

ISBN: 0312347677

In 1987, in Phillips Landing in upstate New York, Paul and Marion Willard get a court injunction to temporarily stop Alta Ferguson from building a swimming pool on her property. Not long afterward, Sheriff Investigator Noel Riesbach interrogates the Willards as to where they have been since Alta apparently fell off the side of a cliff at the spot where she was building the pool.

In 1995 during a downpour, photographer Janet Upton hears a scream and reports that to the police. The local cops investigate and find the body of Janet's Uncle Broderick Hale dead at the same spot where Alta fell. Feeling there is a link, besides the connection to her, as she is also related to Marion and Paul, Janet begins to make inquiries into two deaths.

This is a terrific amateur sleuth tale with police procedural ties. Janet needs to know who killed her Uncle, though she assumes the motive has to do with his vote as a local councilor on the Steep Slopes Law land use. Interestingly, besides the ties through her relatives to the 1987 death, Janet begins to see another connection involving land use that brings her much closer to the killer of her uncle than she ought to be, as a second murder is okay in the mind of the culprit. DEATH BY THE THUNDER is a fine regional cozy.

Harriet Klausner