In the mood for some small town shenanigans and murder? This book is for you. You won't find pulse pounding thrills or crackling prose. This is a straight-ahead, pleasantly written, cozy mystery set in a little town that once existed, but was never like this.

There's a lot of setting up happening in the first half of this book. We're learning about Emma Lord, her son, her town, her former lovers, the eccentric staff of her newspaper, the equally eccentric population of the rest of the town, and a murder. At first I feared that it would all turn out to be too cloying and contrived to be tolerable. But the plot finally settled down into some reasonably intelligent sleuthing and the hints and allegations started mounting up.

This is a good example of this sort of fiction. I couldn't settle for only 3 stars, so it gets 4. ( )

Emma Lord is a single mom who has achieved her dream of owning a small town newspaper. Her son is away at college, so the paper is her main focus.

She is proud of hitting a full year as editor/publisher, but feels she needs to ramp things up. Maybe a big story or increase in advertising dollars?

Her hope is answered when Mark, the grandson of the patriarch of the Doukas family, is murdered. What really knocks it out of the park is the prime suspect is Chris, the other grandson, who has just returned to town after being gone 14 years.

Chris is considered the black sheep of the family due to his mother having married "beneath" her. When her husband disappeared, she packed up and left Alpine. Her father had disowned her when she married, so why not?

Emma relies on her assistant Vida, a virtual encyclopedia of Alpine's families and history, when she starts investigating. Scandal has always been part of the Doukas family and of interest to the town. Seems there is plenty to go around. Especially to a news woman.

Not only is Emma busy with running the weekly publishing schedule and trying to solve the murder, someone from her own past shows up and she has to deal with that and the town's curiosity.

This is the first in this series. I enjoyed it and will be looking for other books in the series. ( )

When Emma Lord, single mother and publisher-editor of a small Washington newspaper, takes in one of her son's friends, she finds herself involved in a murder investigation when the son of one of the town's richest families is killed. I found Emma and her possible romantic triangle a little tedious, but I liked her sidekick, the ascerbic society writer for the paper. The plot was competently spun and I may decide to read more of the series. ( )

This first in a series introduces Emma Lord, the newspaper editor of The Advocate, a small-town paper.Together with her assistant, Vida Runkel, and local sheriff, Milo Dodge, Emma solves a mysterious death and deals with her son and sometimes long-distance boyfriend. ( )

A good start to a GREAT series. ( )