Ecstasy: An Alex Bernier Mystery (Hardcover)

Running parallel to the drug overdose story line is the opening of a new, environmentally friendly cooling system at the local college. Initially implemented with few protests, a tampering incident turns the water red, forcing the school to turn off the system. Assigned to investigate this story, Alex soon discovers that some of the drug-dealing suspects from the rock festival as well as some local businesses are somehow involved with the water cooling system.

Alex continues her relationship with the teens from the festival to attempt to discover where or from whom they got the highly potent LSD, and to try finding the motive for boy's deaths. Alex's search for the truth becomes personal when her refusal to drop the story threatens her reputation, job, relationship with a police officer and potentially her freedom.

Saulnier offers well-developed characters in Ecstasy, realistically portraying diverse personalities-teens, Alex, police officers, and the local community. Mystery aficionados will guess the culprit about two-thirds into the book, although the motive is not apparent until later. The ending scene is pat and unrealistic, but it should not deter any reader from what is overall an enjoyable mystery.

That's when she runs into the Jasperburg Eight, a group of teenagers who've been attending the festival all their lives. Against her will she finds herself liking this motley group of kids, so she is shocked when one of them turns up dead.

Then another one dies. Then another one. It seems as though they are dying of LSD overdoses, but then the coroner comes up with some news that is even more disturbing. Someone has doctored the LSD to intentionally make it lethal and that means these kids have been murdered.

Now Alex sets out to find who the culprit is. Along the way she runs up against a host of obstacles: townspeople who don't want to do anything to stop the flood of money the festival brings in, hippies who don't want to talk, a New York Times reporter who is determined to scoop Alex and a killer who may have Alex in his sights.

Ecstasy is author Beth Saulnier's fourth book featuring Alex Bernier as the main character, and it's easy to see why. Alex is smart and funny, devoted to her handsome police officer boyfriend, torn between being a good person and a good journalist. She's the sort of person who will find a dead body and then debate with herself over whether she should report it to the police or keep the information to herself so she can scoop the competition. (She comes up with a compromise in which everyone wins.)