Ice In The Guise Of Fire
Early in the morning, Lieutenant Lauren Riley is sent to investigate a murder in a notorious, wealthy and politically charged resort in the Sierra Nevada. This will be an interagency investigation involving both Plumas and Butte Counties. From the beginning, it will be complicated, but the tangles do not fully reveal themselves until the investigation is underway, and they keep on coming.
The Lieutenant was born in Moluku Lake. She is the daughter of one of the tribal council members. The tribe is poised to open a casino in the resort – in direct competition with the current hub of all that happens in Moluku Lake – the Eagle Nest Empire. Everyone is for or against the casino and yet, nothing is likely to stop it, unless scandals, blackmail and extortion can slow it down!
Riley arrives in Moluku Lake as a blizzard is already crossing the Sacramento Valley moves into the foothills. The storm won’t slow down this ski resort that is designed to function in snow, but it will place pressure on the annual benefit gala for the art council: the masque ball. And it will allow the sheriff to close the roads in and out of the resort – which traps everyone in a super charged arena as a second murder threatens to unhinge everything.
Moluku Lake is a pleasurable and private destination for the wealthy but behind the obvious opulence, colossal and unscrupulous egos twist back and forth – not for money but in order to demonstrate their power and control. Nothing is what it seems at first and there is nothing like murder to ignite mayhem. The ambitious Lieutenant must sort it all out while keeping her own balance amid help and hinder in a town where everything is the color of ice and just as chilling.
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Abby Hale
This book was an incredible read that I couldn't put down. It threw me multiple times when it came to the plot and always kept me guessing! The storyline was incredible and I finished it in a couple of days as I had to know what happened next! I highly recommend this book and author!
Dan Barnett
Logan Malloy, ruthless owner of a local gossip rag in a frigid, hoity-toity resort area of Plumas County, will never sip martinis again. "She sees a gun pointed at her heart, and awareness instantly reduces to the dark width of the barrel…. She feels a painless thud in her chest, a seizing sensation, followed by a white-hot deep burn…. The last image her brain records is the indifferent face of her murderer as she grapples, vacillates between gasps of incredulity and the terror of drifting, helpless, fading, and dying." No one mourns her passing in the resort town of Moluku Lake, "nestled in the Sierra Nevada." Manipulative, conspiring, Malloy can make or break a person, and has lately become a partisan in the battle between owners of the exclusive Eagle's Nest resort and the insurgent Maidu who want to build a casino (which would cut the Eagle's Nest business in half). At least that's the view of the Nest's owner/operators, Atticus Flynn and Eli Lucas. The problem for Moluku Lake's police chief, Howard Billings, is that pretty much everyone in town is on the suspect list. These are people with money and with lots to hide (good-hearted Billings himself is having an affair). So he calls in Butte County sheriff Jason Noble and two deputies, Kevin Rodriguez and Lt. Lauren Riley (for whom the divorced sheriff has a deep but hidden desire). Butte County has a morgue. And Billings himself may be implicated. Thus begins "Ice In The Guise Of Fire" ($11.95 in paperback from Weston Writes; also for Amazon Kindle) by novelist Nancy Weston, who has fashioned a deliciously scandalous police procedural. Everyone is having some kind of affair; even sheriff Noble must overcome his longing for Lt. Riley, half European and half Maidu. Does Riley's Maidu mother, who lives in the area, know more than she's telling? Throw in a mayor-on-the-take, trophy wives with things to hide, secret rooms, security cameras, a Logan Malloy understudy who wants to be the new king-maker, the sinister meaning of a flower, and, oh yes, a couple of other deaths--and readers are in for a wild romp in more ways than one.
Richard Townsend
Great mystery novel. Great plot, plenty of suspects and lots of clues.