Customer Reviews

Dead in Hog Heaven (Thea Barlow Series)

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Thea Bartow has a lot of guts. Twice she has traveled to Wyoming only to become embroiled in homicide investigations on both occasions. She quits her job as editor to Chicago-based Western True Adventure magazine to relocate in Garnet Pass earning an income writing free lance articles about the West. Thea rents a place sight unseen and tests the waters involving a permanent relationship with her significant other Max.

At a squabbling town meeting, a reenactor's gun goes off and the woman standing next to our intrepid heroine is dead. In the following hours, Thea meets Opal, the owner of Hog Heaven, the site of the old Four Mile Hog Ranch and prostitute joint. She obtains an invitation, expecting to write an article about the place. Instead, she finds Opal dead. When Thea hears footsteps, she yanks the knife out of Opal's corpse, but the person entering the room is the victim's son-in-law, who thinks Thea is a killer. The whole town agrees and Max has his work cut out for him, trying with Thea to find the real killer.

Carol Caverly has written an intricately structured mystery that is nearly impossible to figure out even with the clues lying right out in the open. The problem for the reader is to determine which clues truly matter in solving the case and which are clever red herrings to confuse the case. The relationship between Max and Thea turns into a tension reliever yet adds dimension to this regional mystery. The third installment in the Bartow amateur sleuth tales, DEAD IN HOG HEAVEN, will leave the audience alive in reading heaven.

Harriet Klausner