Sunday, July 26, 2015

"Crazy, I'm crazy for thinking about you." Song Lyrics

I enjoy novels of the American West. After seeing the cover blurb in "Crazy Mountain Kiss," that the story would be perfect for fans of Craig Johnson, I was sold.

A member of the Madison River Liar and Fly Tiers club comes to a rented mountain cabin in order to work on his manuscript. Wanting to warm the cabin up, he checks the chimney and finds a Santa hat there. Then he climbs on the roof of the cabin and finds the body of a teenage girl wedged in the chimney.

How could the teenager get into this spot? What caused  her death? These are questions that on again off again private investigator Sean Stranahan is hired to find out.

The story moves at a liesurly pace as we learn about the characters and life in the Montana mountains.

The deceased, Cindy Huntington is well described. She seemed so full of life and ready for the happiness in her future that her untimely death hits the reader and the other characters hard.

Stranahan keeps at his trade and discovers that there is an adult couples club that would rent the mountain cabin from the Forest Service. Sean begins interviewing the members of the club and comes across a group of wacky characters. Then he begins to get closer to the person responsible for Cindy's death.

It is easy to see why there is a comparison to the work of Craig Johnson. One of the characters is a consultant for a modern TV show about the American West. The show has an American Indian as the sidekick to the sheriff and the sheriff himself, being a tall man who has to duck his head to enter rooms, good comparison to Johnson's TV show, "Longmire".

The life of the characters is well portrayed but the action suffers and it is drawn out before Stranahan makes further headway into solving the crime.

McCafferty is skilled with the character descriptions and tales of their adventures but I would have enjoyed it more if he got right to solving the mystery.  In addition, some of the characters seemed to be right out of a Hallmark TV movie.  However, "Crazy Mountain Kiss" is an enjoyable read and excellent for a book to read on a vacation.

I received a copy of this book in return for my honest review.

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