[Claire Watkins Mysteries 06] • Maiden Rock

Deputy Sheriff Claire Watkins is back, in this tragic, personal follow up to Poison Heart. Claire’s daughter Meg is struggling with depression - after an all-night high school Halloween party, Meg’s best friend was found dead of an apparent suicide at the foot of Maiden Rock. Krista and Meg had fought at the party, over a boy, and Krista had run off. Meg feels responsible, but what shocks the deputy is that Krista was found with meth in her system. Now Claire is faced with a growing trend in her rural town - meth labs, doped-up teenagers, and young girls just looking for a way to escape their small-town lives.

From Publishers WeeklyWhen Meg, deputy sheriff Claire Watkins's 15-year-old daughter, doesn't come home from a Halloween party hosted by close friend Krista Jorgenson at the start of Logue's harrowing fifth mystery set in Pepin County, Wis. (after 2005's Poison Heart), Claire fears the worst. Early the next morning, Claire discovers Krista, still wearing her Halloween costume, lying dead at the foot of a high limestone ledge called Maiden Rock. Two hours later, Claire and Meg, who had spent the night making out with a boy in his car, have a tearful reunion. After Meg learns of Krista's apparent suicide, she blames herself because the two had had a falling out at the party. But when meth turns up in Krista's bloodstream and a woman manufacturing meth in her trailer dies in an explosive fire, it becomes clear there's a serious drug problem among the community's young people. With minimal detail, limited characterization and few plot twists, this cautionary tale may be too straightforward for many mystery readers. (Nov.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the AuthorMary Logue is an award-winning poet and mystery writer. She was born and raised in Minnesota. Her most recent books are Snatched, a middle-grade mystery she wrote with Pete Hautman; Poison Heart, her seventh crime novel; and Meticulous Attachment, her third book of poems. Meticulous Attachment was awarded honorable mention by the Midwest Booksellers Association in 2006 and Dark Coulee won a Minnesota Book Award in 2000. She has also published a young adult novel, Dancing with an Alien, with Harper Collins. Her non-fiction books include a biography of her grandmother, Halfway Home, and a book on Minnesota courthouses, both published by the Minnesota Historial Society Press. She has been an editor at The Village Voice, Simon Schuster, Graywolf Press, Mid-List Press, and The Creative Company. She has taught for many years at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis and at Hamline University in St. Paul. She lives with writer Pete Hautman in Minnesota and Wisconsin.