Fore! In the Hole

A Charlene Parker mystery.

After spending a peaceful and relaxed winter at her home in Nova Scotia Charlene is back in Ontario to open the cottage resort for another noisy and hectic season. Sneaky Bob gets lucky, Sarah is bonkers, the geology students are back and a group of women from an area shelter are there to relax. Charlene's relaxing time is definitely over.

Set mostly in northern Ontario at a cottage resort and partly in rural Nova Scotia at her old fixer-upper house, Fore! In the Hole (book four in the Kirk Lake Camp series of books) features a former Hamilton police detective, Charlene, who would like most of all to spend the season just doing the never ending everyday chores of running a resort, but who seems to end up having to solve murders instead.

Then there are the guests. Not only are the trees too sappy, too messy, too numerous, the mosquitoes and black flies are too many and too pesky, the cabins are too rustic with too few luxuries, with too few televisions (as in none) and too expensive, the other guests are too loud, too drunk, too close, too present, the air temperature is too hot or too cold or too windy or not windy enough, the lake is too cold or too rough, with too few pickerel and bass, the wolf howls are too scary and too close, the black bears are too smelly and too scary and too close, the water snakes too skittish and scary and too close, the garter snakes too, too, too close, the red squirrels and blue jays too chattery and bossy and too close, and the guests' own families are too obnoxious, too stressful, too close.

It's enough to make Charlene want to head south back to a dark alley in the north end of Hamilton to chase a criminal in a hoodie (always a hoodie), with a gun, who is too scary, too mean, too drunk, too stoned, too hilarious, too stupid and too close.

Thank goodness she has time to unwind every now and then with a good Cape Breton single malt whisky.

The season started well. The group of women from a women's shelter had a chance to unwind a little and let mother nature help soothe their worries. It didn't end well. Her angst over the man she left behind on the east coast mixed with her resentment of the man she once loved who lived just a short drive away, caused Charlene as much stress and worry as the dead body discovered on her property just a week before the hectic May long week-end.

Dettagli