THE ALPINE PURSUIT

The hardcover debut of Daheim’s long-running series featuring Emma Lord, publisher of a weekly newspaper in a remote area of Washington State.

Scheduled for a three-night run, the Alpine Dramatic Club’s production of The Outcast, poorly written and chaotically directed by Destiny Parsons, has barely rung down its opening night curtain when it becomes obvious one of its cast members, Hans Berenger, Dean of Students at the local junior college, lies dead, done in not by the blanks specified by the script but by real bullets. Whodunit? Everybody in town loathed the cold, critical man, and when Alpine Advocate publisher Emma and her ace home-page reporter, the pesky Vida Runkel, try to find a motive, everybody seems to have one, although Milo the sheriff is slow to apprehend anyone. While they wait, Emma, still suffering through flashbacks of her lover Tom’s death, uncovers student pot parties, a bushy-haired man skulking about, and a plethora of clues leading to fatal dog bites and a planned enclave for training killer canines. A few grease-heavy meals at the local eatery later, Emma gently accosts the killer at home, then wrestles with her journalistic instincts and her conscience about whether to reveal all.

Daheim’s love of small-town eccentrics and their foibles is contagious, but in the end the plot is snowed under as completely as Alpine in late February.