Slayed on the Slopes by Kate Dyer-Seeley

First Line: You're an idiot, Meg.

A little over six months ago, Meg Reed talked her way into a job working for Portland's Northwest Extreme magazine-- a job she was woefully under-qualified for. Now she's at Mt. Hood's remote Silcox Hut covering Oregon's elite high-altitude rescue team, the Ridge Rangers. Meg has beefed up her skills, but she still hopes to spend some time by the fireplace with a mug of hot chocolate.

Instead she's outside in a blizzard when she hears gunshots. No one believes her until the body of Ridge Ranger Ben Rogers is found the next day. Now the entire group is snowed in, and Meg has to find a killer-- fast!

When I read the first book in this series, Scene of the Climb, I have to admit that I wondered how far this series could go if Meg's duplicity and lack of qualifications for her job continued to be stressed. I am happy to say that they aren't in this second book. In fact, Meg spent the entire summer working on her athletic skills, so that earns her a lot of points in my book. She also doesn't put herself in needless jeopardy as often this time around. More points scored!

Meg is still impulsive, and-- at the age of 23-- she has a tendency to think she's bullet-proof, but that goes hand-in-hand with youth. What we do have is a story that puts her mother and father in a different light from the previous book, and the author also does a marvelous job of putting us right in the middle of some of Mother Nature's best scenery. 

Another thing that I enjoyed while reading Slayed on the Slopes is being shown how Meg puts her article together: the writing, the photography, and how she used social media. All this really gave me a feel for being a magazine journalist.

The mystery is also a good one, with the locked room aspect of being snowed in high on a mountain, and the author does a first-rate job of shifting the focus from one suspect to another. All in all, Slayed on the Slopes improved on the promise of the first book, and I look forward to seeing what sort of mess Meg gets herself into next.  

     

Slayed on the Slopes by Kate Dyer-Seeley

eISBN: 9781617730016

Kensington Books © 2015

eBook, 340 pages

Cozy Mystery, #2 Pacific Northwest mystery

Rating: B+

Source: Purchased from Amazon.  


 

Scene of the Climb by Kate Dyer-Seeley

First Line: My fingernails dug into the soggy dirt as my body lurched closer to the sheer cliff face.

Unemployed journalist Meg Reed is camping out on her best friend's couch when she gets the opportunity to apply for a position at Northwest Extreme magazine there in Portland, Oregon. Lying through her teeth about her outdoor sports skills, she gets the job and eventually finds herself scrambling up steep trails to cover a reality TV adventure show.

Climbing a 2,000-foot mountain peak absolutely terrifies her, but when she witnesses someone plummet off the cliff, Meg discovers that she has a murder to investigate-- because the killer thinks Meg has seen too much.

This is the beginning of a new cozy series that shows a lot of promise. Meg is a good-hearted, and sometimes bumbling, young woman fresh out of college who's always wanted to follow in her talented father's shoes as an investigative journalist. Her best friend Jill has a nice apartment in Portland and is more than willing to put up with Meg's slovenly ways. There are suitable romantic interests for our heroine, and Dyer-Seeley has created a cast that should stand up well to future adventures even if it does contain my least favorite character-- the impossible mother.

The Portland setting with nearby sites and hiking trails made me want to go up there and experience it for myself. Scene of the Climb is a nice blend of the traditional cozy and an adventure with an edge to it, and the series should do well-- especially if a couple of things are addressed.

Meg being a couch potato who has to go out there and learn outdoor skills is going to have a wide appeal among readers; however, I found two of her behaviors to be rather disturbing. She doesn't seem to have a complete understanding of the word "deadline" although she certainly has time to go out for coffee or meals with her friends. This might just mean that I haven't fully recovered from being one of those Type A personalities, but the other thing well and truly drives me up a wall. Without going into too much detail, she knows that her life is in danger, but instead of exercising at least a bit of common sense and caution, Meg just keeps going out to test her luck.  Not. Good.

The other thing that bothered me is something I normally do not mention, but I feel I have to here. Incorrect punctuation a time or two, the wrong word in a sentence... if they happen less than five times in a book, I ignore it. But it happened over and over and over in this book. The proofreading and editing were abysmal. Countless instances of missing or extra words, "air" being used instead of "err," and a scene in which Meg was called first thing in the morning to meet someone who was an hour away. Meg left almost immediately, but as she was driving non-stop to her destination, the sun had set. 

As I said before, this series has a lot of promise. I'm hoping that Meg locates her common sense, and that the next book is edited more carefully because then the promise will begin to be realized.
 

Scene of the Climb by Kate Dyer-Seeley

ISBN: 9780758295316

Kensington © 2014

Mass Market Paperback, 299 pages

Cozy Mystery, #1 Pacific Northwest mystery

Rating: C+

Source: Purchased at The Poisoned Pen.