Avalanche Pass (Jesse Parker Mysteries) [Paperback]

Former Detective, Jesse Parker was injured in a ski accident and while his physical injuries have healed the emotional ones have not. He is afraid to ski on the difficult slopes where he was injured. He decides to head to Utah to a wonderful ski lodge to try to work through his issues without the pressure of all his friends standing by.

Jesse heads to the slopes one last time before he heads home. Unable to overcome his fears he returns to the lodge to find it has been turned into a war zone, complete with guns on the roof. The guests and staff have been taken hostage by about 20 heavily armed men.

Meanwhile the FBI determines one of the guests of the lodge is a United States Senator. They also find the ransom amount odd and they start to think there is more to the story than just wanting money. They also learn that they have a man that can help them on the inside, an ex-cop and part-time Sheriff's Deputy. Jesse had checked out of the hotel before he went skiing so as long as he's careful he may be able to help free the hostages and stay in contact with the FBI and stop the cold blooded captors in their tracks.

Dollycas's Thoughts
One of the very first things I noticed about this book is that the author was from Australia which accounts for some of the terminology or wording to be a little unusual for a story that takes place in the United States. After I accepted that fact I was able to look beyond that flaw and enjoy the story. It is a really good suspenseful story. It has a hostages playing a part in their rescue, kind of a Flight 93 on 9/11 element that was quite gripping.

I had not read the first book in this series, Storm Peak: A Jesse Parker Mystery, and had absolutely no problem following the story line so this book could definitely read as a stand alone, although now I would like to read the first one. I want to see how Jesse's story began.

This author is better know for his fantasy series for children in grades 4 - 8 but the first book in this adult series was a New York Times Bestseller and this follow up may be too. I give it 4 stars.

The plot is very plausible and nicely constructed. Tension builds throughout the book and I couldn't wait to see what happened.

It was easy to overlook the sometimes strange phrases.

There were no "loose ends" at the end which is always important to me.

I am giving the author the benefit of the doubt, and giving a 3-star rating, even though I gave up on the book early on. I found reading it to be so irritating that I quit after 4 or 5 chapters. The author is obviously not American, and his characters do not speak "American". I may have been overly sensitive, being a skier, but the hero of the book is supposed to be an expert skier and a Colorado Ski Patrol member, and the lingo is all wrong and the conversations are wrong. The narrative and the dialogue just do not ring true. Set elsewhere in the world, this might not be a problem. Set in the Rocky Mountains, it jars the ear. Average people in this country just don't talk like that.