The Alpine Obituary [Mass Market Paperback]

One of the things that always delights me whenever I begin a new Alpine mystery is just how easy...and how pleasurable...it is to re-immerse myself in Emma Lord's world. Mary Daheim has such a marvelous flair for making her on-going characters so immediately accessible and appealing that even if you haven't read any of her other books, it still feels as if you are coming home. However, I thought one of the especially outstanding features of Emma's latest adventure was the new light that it shed on so many old, familiar faces. There were also some marvelous, almost O'Henry-like twists to this particular plot that heightened my overall enjoyment of the novel and made me extremely eager to find out what will happen next in Emma's life. Maybe we could follow her to Rome on an Alpine Pilgrimage?

Emma Lord, owner and editor of the Alpine Advocate is not doing so well. She and Tom had an affair which produced her son Adam and she then waited almost 30 years for him to marry her. Now she feels as if her life is over and nothing interests her.

Her priest brother, Ben whose parish is in Tuba City, Arizona, invites her to go to Italy with him where he has a conference, but she doesn't really want to go anywhere.

And she's worried about her son, Adam, who's a newly ordained priest and his parish is in Northern Alaska, where he has to worry about dying of cold or polar bears.

Judge Marsha Foster-Klein, who was the judge at the trial of Tom's killer, asks a favor of Emma, she's got a threatening letter and would like Emma to investigate it.

At first Emma doesn't want to do it, but Vida finally convinces her to do it. The letter claims the Judge will never get her appointment because of things that had happened in the past, and included was an old photograph showing a railroad trestle with a rope hanging from it. The photo is probably 90 years old and none of them know what it means.

Then at the funeral of Jack Froland, Miles Dodge, the sheriff drives up and stops the burial. There are suspicions that Jack, a man in his 80's who was dying of cancer, may have been murdered.

And if that wasn't enought, a forest fire starts and after it's over, a dead body is found.

How these three storylines are intertwined, along with a fourth storyline, which takes place in 1916-1917, showing ancestors of many of the people involved in the modern story and explains what the photograph means, is a fascinating mystery which Emma finds difficult to solve.

Highligts:

Jack Froland funeral announcement which says "Come See Jack In The Box."

Milo asking Emma after a home cooked meal if it would help her if they went to bed together?

The fact that Milo is so obviously in love with her and seems to be taking her role in the unrequited love department.

The character's in this series are so real, that you just ache for them.

Spencer Fleetwood - owner of the new radio station in town, who keeps scooping Emma on all the stories.

Lowlights:

Tom Cavanaugh - I never liked this character. (See my review of the early books in this series) but I wanted Emma to dump him, not be devestated by having him die.

Where is everybody? You barely see Ginny Burmeister the office manager, Leo Walsh, the Ad Manager. The new reporter Scott Chamoud is more involved but Emma's old reporter Carla, who was a great character is barely mentioned. Only Vida is prominant in the story and she is beginning to be a little overwhelming and turning somewhat unlikeable.

I don't have the next book in the series yet, but ordered it the other day and can hardly wait for it to get here. I've been on vacation this week and have read more than half of this series in the last week. It was almost impossible to stop reading these books, once I started.