{"id":4120,"date":"2021-07-23T07:04:35","date_gmt":"2021-07-23T14:04:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=4120"},"modified":"2021-07-23T07:04:35","modified_gmt":"2021-07-23T14:04:35","slug":"denise-swanson-body-over-troubled-waters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/denise-swanson-body-over-troubled-waters\/","title":{"rendered":"Denise Swanson: Body Over Troubled Waters"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Denise Swanson remains one of my favorite cozy writers.\u00a0 Now twenty-three books into her Scumble River series (now billed as \u201cReturn to Scumble River\u201d), she\u2019s still cooking with gas.\u00a0 The books are packed with humor as well as real world details of main character Skye Dennison\u2019s work as a school psychologist, a job Swanson herself held for many years.<\/p>\n

Cozy writers have to strike a tricky balance between addressing an issue but not being too harsh with it.\u00a0 In a bravura first sequence, Skye is attending a meeting with Superintendent of schools Shamus Wraige, who has unceremoniously fired the school security officer because Scumble River is a small town and \u201cIt\u2019s not as if anyone here is going to pull a Columbine or a Sandy Hook.\u201d<\/p>\n

Skye is horrified and mentally begins writing a memo outlining the statistics of school shootings and why a security officer is necessary.\u00a0 The officer has been replaced by Wraige\u2019s son, Tavish, who will function as an \u201cattendance\u201d officer.\u00a0 As Skye hurries to speak with Dr. Wraige after the meeting, the school goes into an active shooter lockdown.<\/p>\n

How to balance this type of situation in a cozy?\u00a0 Masterfully, Swanson folds in Skye\u2019s husband, Wally, the town police chief (who of course is worried about his wife) and when the culprit and situation are tracked down, the whole thing turns out to be much less hazardous than it sounds. \u00a0I won\u2019t spoil Swanson\u2019s set up, but I will say it involves Scumble River\u2019s notorious, troubled and hilarious Doozier family.<\/p>\n

While the school shooting issue is addressed in a cozy manner, Swanson diffuses it with humor and then springboards from this situation to the main situation in the novel, which involves Shamus Wraige.\u00a0 Because Swanson has used her opening to shade in Dr. Wraige\u2019s personality, when she starts describing the petty thefts he has suffered and finally the theft of his car, a situation which brings the mayor down on Wally, as readers we are as bemused and irritated by him as are Skye and Wally.<\/p>\n

When Wally is called to look into a suspicious noise at Wraige\u2019s house and discovers him dead, he calls in Skye, in her function as a consulting psychologist to the police department.\u00a0 This is another thing I think is really well done in these books \u2013 Skye\u2019s connection to the investigation not only uses her skill set, but it\u2019s believable, as she is actually a paid police consultant.<\/p>\n

The resulting investigation is clever and well thought out, zeroing in, golden age style, to very few suspects.\u00a0 As readers, we also get a chance to catch up on Skye and Wally\u2019s happy home life as recent newlyweds and the parents of twins.\u00a0 Twenty-three books in, readers are familiar with the community surrounding Skye, and it\u2019s filled with great characters from Skye\u2019s mother to her librarian friend Trixie to a pathologist named Doris Ann Norris.\u00a0 Doris Ann was a real-life librarian well known (and loved) in the crime community who passed away a few years ago, and it\u2019s a real delight to encounter her again in print.\u00a0 It actually brought a tear to my eye.<\/p>\n

In person, Denise Swanson is a thoughtful, calm, kind and intelligent woman, and those traits are certainly reflected in her main character and alter ego, Skye.\u00a0 One of the running themes of the books is the basic decency of both Wally and Skye.\u00a0 While I worried as a reader that some of the energy in the series would be diffused when Skye and Wally at last got married, I should have trusted Ms. Swanson.\u00a0 As her many fans and readers know, she has a sure hand at the story telling helm.\u00a0 This is another delightful entry in a beloved series.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Denise Swanson remains one of my favorite cozy writers.\u00a0 Now twenty-three books into her Scumble River series (now billed as \u201cReturn to Scumble River\u201d), she\u2019s still cooking with gas.\u00a0 The books are packed with humor as well as real world details of main character Skye Dennison\u2019s work as a school psychologist, a job Swanson herself … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[633,635,118,414,632,630,631,634],"class_list":["post-4120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-body-over-troubled-waters","tag-cupid","tag-denise-swanson","tag-poisoned-pen-press","tag-school-psychologist","tag-scumble-river","tag-skye-dennison","tag-valentines-day"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4120"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4122,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4120\/revisions\/4122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}