This is a very hard to find audiobook not showing any availability at Amazon or eBay.
Narrated by Anna Fields
What makes a great book even better? An audio book of it – read by Kate Fleming/Anna Fields! Yay! I located a set of cassettes of this out-of-print audiobook, and digitized them as I knew I’d want to listen more than once.
Our heroine is Veronica, an interior decorator who lives in Seattle. She’s arrived in her home town of Fossil, in East Washington state, having just learned about her sister’s murder that occurred a month ago while she was out of the country on business. Both their parents are also gone, and Veronica has inherited the family business, a bar called the Tonk, her sister’s home, and at least temporary custody of her niece, 6-year-old Lizzy, because Lizzy’s father has been accused of the murder and is currently on the lam.
When Veronica goes into the bar to meet the current manager/bartender and see how things are going, she gets a rush of why she wanted to leave all those years ago: in her own personal memory of her upbringing, her father was a party-guy and her mother worked too hard to please him, running the bar. She and her sister worked in the bar until she left town – her sister had been running it ever since. She hated the bar and working there, and wants to just sell it and take Lizzy with her back to her life in Seattle.
Our hero is Cooper Blackstock, who is doing a little undercover by working as the current manager/bartender for the Tonk, not letting on to anyone that Eddie, Lizzy’s father, is his half-brother. As far as Coop is concerned, Eddie is innocent even if he did run, and he wants to see if he can figure out the killer’s identity.
Of course, the chemistry between Ronnie and Coop is pretty immediate, and it isn’t all good chemistry – they’re fighting like cats and dogs right off the bat. A friend, Marissa, had been taking care of the bar for Ronnie while trying to locate her, and hired Coop and also leased him the upstairs room in the sister’s house – so now he’s living with Ronnie and Lizzy.
We get the scary killer’s POV but only vague clues to his identity as little pieces of the puzzle begin to come to light. Apparently the sister had an affair with someone famous or upstanding in the community, and fingers are pointing around. Whoever it is is feeling pretty cocky about how he has fooled everyone.
There’s a cute secondary romance between Marissa, who is widowed, and Kody the refrigerator guy who has a thing about women with kids. He’ll go out with her, and sleep with her when the kids are away, but he doesn’t want to ever meet the kids. Once she figures out he has a problem with her kids, she drops him. Ah, remember it’s a romance, and they manage to get together and straighten it all out.
Meanwhile, Coop is looking for any clues, and Ronnie is falling in love – but, oops, someone recognizes Coop and spills the beans about his relationship to Eddie in front of Ronnie. There goes that whole trust thing! Coop, sensitive Marine that he is, does some serious courting – flowers, gifts, you name it (he loves Lizzy’s new cat; he’s great with kids; he probably even eats quiche) – and manages to get back in her good graces. Whew – good thing too, because he has fallen head over heels for her! (get it??)
The audiobook is flawless (now that I digitized it and removed all the repeated sentences…). Kate Fleming was an amazingly brilliant narrator and really made this one shine! Her ability to create a world of characters with her voice is something all narrators aspire to, and she has the whole package – a wide range of pitch, accents, and the acting chops to make a great book even better.
Melinda
Narration: A+
Book Content: A+
Steam Factor: Glad I had my earbuds in
Violence: None
Genre: Contemporary romance
Publisher: Books on Tape
I found this one at the library last year – just picked it up because it was Anna Fields and wanted to listen to her again. I think that may be a good place to find these older titles.