Deep Lakes, Wisconsin, is a town immersed in winter. The roads are kept open, but locals don’t try to go far, just out around town for company and entertainment, and also, to the ice for some fishing. DEEP DARK SECRETS are held in the lakes.
We meet Francine Champagne, a divorced lady with grown kids who sank insurance money into Bubble and Bake, her hospitality venture. This includes baking by day and a winery by night, so I don’t know where she gets time to sleep. Frankie, as she’s known, learns that Pastor Bradford Rawlins died in a tragic accident in his ice-fishing shanty on Lake Loki. Journalist at heart, though she’s never been a staff reporter, just a stringer, Frankie immediately drives to the scene. The bait shop owners tell her of discovering the body as dawn broke.
Writing up the investigation and simultaneously getting up early to be a baker, Frankie is lucky to have a friend, Carmen Martinez, as a partner. She also gets helpers when she’s being a wine-maker. I didn’t know Wisconsin had local wines, but it seems there are cold-weather-tolerant grape varieties and the first batch has been pressed. Somehow, Frankie seems to be doing too many things in this cosy crime story. I feel the winemaking could have been left for the next in the series.
Among the locals is Garrett Iverson, a pleasant man who is the local coroner and with Valentine’s Day approaching, might be a possible date for Frankie. The local police, led by Sheriff Alonzo Goodman, know the journalist and give her a few details, but not many. The pastor’s untimely death has caused a sensation and full-time reporters for the local paper The Whitman Daily Watch want a scoop. Frankie has to get a workaround by stringing for Point Press, a bigger publication in another town. But they want results, not innuendo. This means interviewing the church staff and the congregation.
Every reader is going to come up with different suspicions, and Frankie gets led in a few directions before settling on any threads in common with the stories. Joy Ann Ribar has created a far busier scene than I would have guessed, given the depth of snow, and we even sight some wildlife. DEEP DARK SECRETS...there are plenty, and they don’t all lurk in the lakes. This is an enjoyable read that starts the Deep Lakes Cozy series.
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