Alpine Decoy [Mass Market Paperback]

An Emma Lord mystery by the author of "The Alpine Christmas."
When a beautiful young African-American nurse with a shady past takes a job in Alpine, some locals show their true bigoted natures, filling editor-publisher Emma Lord with disgust. But when a second newcomer -- a young black man -- is found shot through the head, Emma is stuck with a story she will never forget.
Though Sheriff Milo Dodge connects the victim to the nurse, Emma believes there's something more sinister afoot. So she and Vida Runkel, her formidable house-and-home editor, try writing their own scenario. But the case offers too many subplots, too many suspects, and one crafty killer who leaves no tracks. That is, until Emma hits the deadly trail . . .

Mary Daheim and I go back a long way -- well, seventeen or eighteen years. That's a long time for a publishing association. Years before I became Mary's editor on the Emma Lord/Alpine series for Ballantine, I was an editorial assistant at another trade house -- and that's where we met, long distance. She lives in Seattle; I live in New York; even eighteen year ago, the phone lines stretched in both directions. At the time Mary was writing successful historical romances for my then-boss, a senior editor. One day Mary and I revealed our unbridled passion for reading crime fiction. Little did I dream then that, soon after I arrived at Ballantine, Mary would become a crime writer herself. Of course, now she's a nationally renowned one . . . and I especially treasure her novels about Emma Lord, the editor-publisher of a small-town weekly newspaper in fictional (but based on fact) Alpine, Washington. The paper is called The Alpine Advocate, which is also the title of the first novel in the series. For any readers who haven't visited Alpine, I heartily recommend starting with Book One -- and then continuing forward (in alphabetical order) to THE ALPINE BETRAYAL, THE ALPINE CHRISTMAS, THE ALPINE DECOY, THE ALPINE ESCAPE, THE ALPINE FURY, THE ALPINE GAMBLE, THE ALPINE HERO, THE ALPINE ICON, THE ALPINE JOURNEY, and (coming soon) THE ALPINE KINDRED.

--Joe Blades, Associate Publisher