The Alpine Xanadu by Mary Daheim

4 STARS

The Alpine Xanadu: An Emma Lord Mystery #24

This is my first time reading an Emma Lord mystery their is a lot of history that I don't know so at times I was a little lost and others why this was important to the story. I imangine if your a long time fan you would like this more than me at times.

The Characters are well developed and you can tell most of them have been around along time with full backgrounds. Emma and the Sheriff sometimes I wondered at their relationship the way they talked to each other or yell. Other times I was laughing at them and with them.
Emma is the owner of a newspaper and online news for the town of Alpine. Their is a radio station that is competition for the news. Vida works for both of them. She is mad at the Sheriff for something in the past. She knows everything that is going on unless it has to do with her blind spot Roger.
Their is a new rehab and mental health center opening up. They keep lots of secerets. Close by a man fixing something is killed. It seems to be accident or was it.
One of Emma's reporter does not realize that the Sheriff is living with her. He does not trust the sheriff.
The Sheriff's daughter has come to town after she has some problems and feels only safe living with him. So he moves back to his house for a while. He plans to sell his house and wants to expand Emma's and keeps getting bigger and bigger. She is worried how they will be able to pay for it.

Their is lots of small town information in the story that makes it nice to know. I wish I had read earlier stories about Emma Lord seems like a lot goes on for a small town. I will be on the lookout for more of Mary's work in the future.

I was given this ebook to read and asked to give honest review of it by Netgalley.
01/29/2013 PUB Random House Publishing Group Ballantine 336 pages
Discription below taken off of Goodreads.

Winter in the small mountain aerie of Alpine should be as quiet as new-fallen snow on the Cascades, but from the Grocery Basket to the Venison Inn, the town is humming. At the Alpine Advocate, editor Emma Lord and her staff are on deadline with a feature about the opening of RestHaven, a new rehab and mental health facility. Front Street is buzzing with gossip about Emma’s recent engagement to Sheriff Milo Dodge. And now that fool Wayne Eriks has climbed an electric pole in the middle of a storm and got himself electrocuted.

Sheriff Dodge doesn’t buy the idea that Wayne’s death is an accident. But how—and, more important, why—he died is only one of the conundrums that keep the sheriff and Emma working overtime. Why is RestHaven giving Alpine so many restless nights? What to make of allegations that someone’s trying to kill the richest man in town . . . or whispers of a rash of indecent behavior at the local high school? After Vida Runkel, the Advocate’s stalwart House & Home editor, disappears into thin air, Milo and Emma suddenly have too many loose ends to solve before they can even think about tying the knot.

Featuring beloved characters from the series alongside some sinister new ones—not to mention a mystery that will shake Alpine to its core—The Alpine Xanadu may be Mary Daheim’s most delicious novel yet.