1960’s Vermont

Sarah Stewart Taylor: Hunter’s Heart Ridge

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Franklin Warren and Alice Bellows #2

Hunter’s Heart Ridge is the second in Sarah Stewart Taylor’s Detective Frank Warren and Alice Bellows series, and it sees both of them returning with new challenges. Alice and Warren (no one seems to call him Frank) are neighbors, and have become good friends in the three months that have passed since the first book. Frank is still very much settling into his professional role, but he’s already become a fixture in this small community. He and his partner in crime solving, Pinky, are working well together, and he’s become familiar with everyone in town. Alice, on the other hand, is happy in her retirement and hosting a dinner party that includes Warren as a prominent guest. read more

Sarah Stewart Taylor: Agony Hill

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Series debut

Sarah Stewart Taylor starts a new series with Agony Hill, following Detective Franklin Warren as he tries to start his life over again. Set in the tiny Vermont town of Bethany in the 1960s, the novel immediately plunges the reader into small town, rustic life, and realities of the struggling farmers there. The characters are rich, and each of the three point of view characters especially get filled out into living, breathing people.

When Warren arrives in town, he gets little time to settle in, or even unpack. Immediately, there is a barn fire up on Agony Hill. At first, it seems like a clear-cut suicide. The victim, Hugh Weber, was always one for making statements, and he was deeply against the highway set to go through town. The barn was latched from the inside, too. With no alternate exits, it seems clear that Weber got drunk and took his ideals a little too far. read more