All the Bad Stuff Comes in Threes: A Pat Garrett, Leigh McCracken Mystery - Softcover

Gallob, Karen Weinant

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0944851274 ISBN 13: 9780944851272

Publisher: Earth Star Publications, 2014

Synopsis

Not your average Miss Marple, Alma's short-term memory fails her more often than not. Even so, she's learned a thing or two in her 91 years. She knows that nothing is as important as one's reputation in the community. Furthermore, it's clear that the bad stuff always comes in threes.Could she really be expected to remember to tell her son that she had to work her way around an annoying dead body to find her club gift? After all, the fact that Alma remembered the gift at all should keep her friends from thinking she is getting old.As they probe this community of respectable but water-reliant individuals, can mellow Sheriff Pat Garrett and his firecracker deputy McCracken discover the killer of the low-life water thief found in Alma's shed?

About this title

About the Author

Karen Weinant Gallob is an anthropologist who taught for several years at Metropolitan State College, Denver, and at the University of Colorado. She is interested in the relationships among language, culture, and human perceptions of reality. In addition to her Ph.D. thesis, A Study of Humor in Mauritius (complete with jokes), she has also published articles and reviews in her field, newspaper articles, and poetry. She wrote the "Carpe Diem in the Crawford Outback" series for the North Fork Merchant Herald from 2001 until 2005. Although they are their own accomplishments, she is most boastful of her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Karen lives on the family ranch south of Crawford, Colorado, where nary a summer day goes by that she doesn't hear her husband, Dave, say, "This place could really grow some hay if we only had a little more irrigatin' water."

Review

Everyone loves a good mystery... A few months ago Karen asked me to be a pre-publication reader of her mystery novel. I have to admit that at the time I was very busy and wasn't sure how to fit it into my schedule, but I had enjoyed Karen's writing so much in the past that I decided to just "make" the time to read it. And WOW - I'm glad I did! For those of you familiar with Karen's writing style you know that she takes care with her words and uses them not so much to tell, as to show the reader what she wants us to see. She seems to take a special pleasure in taking a "fly on the wall" view of the world. She's a keen observer and connoisseur of what many of us fail even to notice in everyday life: The way people speak, their facial expressions, the details of life that we see as so mundane that they escape our interest; the subtleties of our unspoken actions, the unique quirks that make each of us not just an individual, but a one-of-a-kind creation. Karen does not take the Point A to Point B approach to storytelling - and you will be glad of that. In reading this mystery you will be glad that she takes the winding road in getting to her destination. As I neared the end of the nearly 300-page adventure, I was hoping that a new chapter would magically appear - I was enjoying the ride, after all! The setting of the story was also a pleasure. This not being a run-of-the-mill "the butler did it" type mystery, I marveled in the similarities between the down-to-Earth fictional community of Croysant, and the real-life Crawford. The characters - all 24 of them - also had a familiarity that made the read especially enjoyable. And like most good mysteries, you will be guessing up till the end. --Nathan Sponseller, co-publisher, North Fork Merchant Herald

Karen Gallob knows rural Crawford in western Colorado right down to her toenails, and the result is this rollicking read about ladies and their deliciously gossipy neighborhood clubs, competition over water, clueless newcomers and, of course, the little problem of murder. --Betsy Marston, editor of Writers On The Range, High Country News

About this edition

• Publisher: Earth Star Publications
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0944851274
• ISBN 13: 9780944851272
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 302