Customer Reviews

Wingbeat

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Those who have already read books from the Tempe Crabtree series will know that the Deputy is not your average heroine. She is the only woman deputy in what seems to be a very patriarchal town, and is constantly torn between her Native American (Yanduchi) traditions and her loyalty to her minister husband.
One of the best things, about Meredith's novels are her characters. They are real people with real problems, honest enough so that we like them and flawed enough so that we love them. And most importantly, so we see ourselves in them!
Tempe's Native American heritage is used, but not pushed during the course of the story. I really enjoyed this, as it gave the mystery a chance to shine through rather than feeling like I was being given a lecture. Meredith gives you just enough information to make you want to learn more, but so much that you get bored.
Although Wing Beat doesn't have as much action as some mystery lovers might be accustomed to, the plot is quite compelling and the story engaged me to the point where I had a hard time putting it down for anything! You can be assured that I'll be ordering the other 3 Tempe Crabtree books right away!

Unlike the rest of California, the fictional town of Bear Creek doesn't consider marijuana a "safe" drug. Deputy Tempe Crabtree, the Native American heroine of Marilyn Meredith's award-winning mystery series, may be consigned to patrol by her dismissive male counterparts, but she knows the law as well as she knows her pastor husband, Hutch. Or does she?

It seems that while some pot growers insist on stonewalling Tempe, citizens of the small community where she lives and enforces the law insist that Hutch is yet another man of the cloth gone bad. Could gentle, loving Hutch, who disapproves of Tempe's association with Native American shamanism, expose himself to schoolchildren? Tempe doesn't think so, but her son Blair, a hotheaded firefighter, does. More to the point, even her boss suspects Hutch. Where's a peace pipe or a rain dance when you need one?

What else could go wrong? One of the marijuana farmers turns up dead, and to top it all off, she's actually the missing granddaughter of Tempe's friend Joe Seaberry, a retired cop.

Fortunately, Tempe's multiple roles, as Yanduchi-born woman, wife, mother, and deputy, give her multiple insights and eyes as powerful as the owl that foretells death among her people. Also, at the end of the day, she has a strong marriage, held together by faith and true love.

Author Marilyn Meredith continues to be a strong voice for the Christian faith as well as for women in fiction, particularly female law enforcement officers rain-dancing as fast as they can to break the glass ceiling. Just say yes to Tempe Crabtree.