Chanticleer Book Reviews

Author: m-l-rowland

SPOTLIGHT on M&Ms – Mystery & Mayhem AWARDS CIBAs – Cozy Mysteries, Amateur Sleuths, and more!
Welcome to our SPOTLIGHT on the CHANTICLEER INTERNATIONAL BOOK AWARDS (the CIBAs): the MYSTERY & MAYHEM Awards Deadline is upon us!

We are seeking the best novels featuring “mystery and mayhem,” amateur sleuthing, romantic suspense, light suspense, travel mystery, classic mystery, British cozy, hobby sleuths, senior sleuths, or historical mystery. We will put them to the test and discover the best among them. (For thrillers, action suspense, detective, crime fiction see our Clue Awards)

The APRIL 30th deadline for the Chanticleer Mystery & Mayhem Awards (aka M&Ms) has been extended until May 31, 2020 due to many requests for an extension due to these unprecedented times of the Covid-19 pandemic.

In just a few short days, we go to work to uncover the hidden secrets, the lost key, the answer to the question, Whodunit?

The 2019 Mystery and Mayhem FINALISTS were posted on April 30, 2020.

Congratulations to these authors whose works have advanced to this new achievement level of the Chanticleer International Book Awards in the Mystery and Mayhem Book Awards division.

Michelle Cox won the 2018 GRAND PRIZE for Murder and Mystery for A Promise Given (A Henrietta and Inspector Howard Series, Book 3)

The First in Category, First Place Winners for 2018 are:
- B.L. Smith – Bert Mintenko and the Minor Misdemeanors
- Becky Clark – Fiction Can be Murder
- Traci Andrighetti – Campari Crimson: Franki Amato Mysteries, Book 4
- C. A. Larmer – Evil Under the Stars: The Agatha Christie Book Club (Book 3)
- Nancy J. Cohen – Hair Brained
- Stone Winkler/Jessica H. Stone – Blood on a Blue Moon: A Sheaffer Blue Mystery
- Anna Castle – A Professor and Mrs. Moriarty Mystery: Moriarty Takes His Medicine, Book 2
Carl & Jane Bock are the M&M Grand Prize winners in 2017 for Coronado’s Trail: An Arizona Borderlands Mystery

The First in Category, First Place Winners for 2017 are:
- Michelle Cox – A Ring of Truth: A Henrietta and Inspector Howard Mystery, Book 2
- Amy Peele – Cut: A Medical Murder Mystery
- D.J. Adamson – Suppose: A Lillian Dove Mystery
- M. Louisa Locke – Deadly Proof: A Victorian San Francisco Mystery
- Betty Jean Craige – Fairfield’s Auction
- Kim Hunt Harris – Unsightly Bulges (A Trailer Park Princess Cozy Mystery, Book 2)
Alice K. Boatwright is the MYSTERY & MAYHEM Grand Prize winner in 2016 for Under an English Heaven!

The First in Category, First Place Winners for 2016 are:
- Lucy Carol – Hot Scheming Mess, Madison Cruz, Book 1
- Kate Vale – Secrets Revealed, Cedar Islands Tales, Book 4
- Barbara Venkataraman – Engaged in Danger: A Jamie Quinn Mystery
- Michelle Cox – A Girl Like You: A Henrietta and Inspector Howard series
- Jennifer Kincheloe – The Secret Life of Anna Blanc
- Gay Yellen – The Body Next Door
Wendy Delaney is the 2015’s M&M Grand Prize Winner for There’s Something About Marty

The First in Category, First Place Winners for 2015 are:
- Leighann Dobbs – Ghostly Paws (Mystic Notch, Book 1)
- Cherie O’Boyle – Iced Tee
- M. L. Rowland – Murder Off the Beaten Path (A Search and Rescue Mystery)
- Lonna Enox – Blood Relations
- Nancy G. West – Fit to be Dead
- Michele Lynn Seigfried – Community Affairs, Jersey Shore Mystery
- Jennifer Mueller – Murder Beside the Salish Sea
- Michael Scheffel – St. Louis Affair: The Adventures of Herbert Falken
- Mark Vilela – The Long December
- Kate Vale – Crossing Paths
Bernadette Pajer of the Professor Bradshaw Series — Fatal Induction took home the 2013 M&M Grand Prize

Pamela Beason won GRAND PRIZE in 2012 for The Only Witness

Is your amateur sleuth suspicious of the little old lady who lives next door? Is there something wrong in Mayberry and your hero is going to find out what it is – no matter the cost? Are the stakes so high for your heroine, she succumbs to the hot, sexy delivery man who happens to be the guy with forty bodies buried in his basement? Is your character’s cat helping him solve the latest crime?

If so, have we got the contest for you!

Mystery & Mayhem

Your book could earn a place in our M&M hall of fame for 2020!

All you have to do is enter.

And due to these unprecedented times, we have extended the deadline from April 30, 2020 to May 31, 2020.

Unpublished Manuscripts and recently Published (Indie, Traditional, Hybrid) Novels (after Jan. 1, 2018) are accepted.

Our Mystery & Mayhem Awards are the Chanticleer International Book Awards search for today’s best cozy mystery fiction books!

Do not hesitate – or stop to solve a crime –

the M&M Awards extended deadline is MAY, 31, 2020!

Click here to enter – and good luck!
May 2, 2020
MURDER OFF the BEATEN PATH (A Search and Rescue Mystery) by M.L. Rowland – Female Sleuth, Cozy Mystery, Women’s Adventure, Search and Rescue

It’s an uncommon mystery novel that delivers a really good whodunit and yet makes the central character’s passion for her avocation, in this instance the world of mountain search and rescue teams, an equally good reason for reading a book from cover to cover.

M.L. Rowland knows her stuff in the field of S&R and authorship. You’ll never again see a TV news report of someone caught in a mountain disaster—trapped after a rock slide or pinned in their car after plunging off a high-altitude road—without remembering the riveting account of Gracie Kincaid as she and her experienced, professional rescue team make their way down a dangerous cliff at night to recover the body of a crash victim, only to discover that the victim is a dear friend of hers.

It’s a dark portrait.

You’ll know everything Gracie sees, feels, hears. Virtually no detail escapes her, whether it’s the seedy Christian camp where she works in the mountains of Southern California as a rope climbing instructor, on the trail of the suspicious, nasty, even venal brothers who run the camp, or her heartbreaking chores as an experienced senior member of a mountain search and rescue team. But it’s her experiences as a senior member of her team at work, that sets this book apart from other cozy mysteries. It’s possible to get these details from book-learning, but the writer’s personal experience in this field clearly shines through.

While Gracie excels in her public service passion, not the same can be said about the rest of her life. A former advertising exec, she’s wandered from place to place until she has settled into a small cabin in the mountains of Southern California. A rich Brit that she rescued on a previous mission wants to wrap her up with a bow. They have great passionate sex—only hinted at here—but his world is not her world. And then the fellow Searcher, who captures her mind, but, alas, not her heart.

The third man in her life, certainly not by choice, is an utter creep. Her scary encounter with him, richly detailed, is a convincing portrayal of a monster.

The mystery itself is rich and satisfying: the story of a woman, told in the third person as a narrative, who obsesses over the suspicious death of a friend and co-worker at the camp and her search to uncover the terrible secret her friend discovered before she died when her car plunged over a cliff on a tortuous narrow mountain road. What she discovers is a web of drug-dealing, parental abuse, and the dark secret of what is really going on with the children attending the camp. A strange and sorrowful juxtaposition the camp makes against the pristine surrounding landscape.

The portrait that emerges is of a smart, well-trained but hardly invulnerable woman whose occasional forays into her personal life seem less successful than her dedication to her work. Her life may be messy, but, isn’t everyone’s? Murder Off the Beaten Path manages the literary trick of being both a good mystery and a well-drawn portrait of a woman any reader might want nearby if found in dire need of being rescued in the mountains.

Recommended.

January 8, 2018