MRC RECOMMENDS: The Secret of Ravens Valley
by Linda Norlander
“Buckle your seat belts and hold on to your handrails as you enjoy this fast-paced book.” – Mystery Review Crew
The Secret of Ravens Valley
By Linda Norlander
Genre: Cozy Mystery
Series: A Liza and Mrs. Wilkens Mystery Book #2
Fanny Porter, a besieged rural community librarian, ends a video call with her friend Liza Johnson with the cryptic words “You know I’m in deep, and it’s scaring me.” Several days later, she is found dead on a lonely county road near the town of Ravens Valley.
At the funeral, Liza and her neighbor, Mrs. Wilkens, discover a town cloaked in fear. People are afraid to attend the funeral because Fanny was embroiled with a powerful group trying to ban books in the library. But the fear goes deeper in a community dependent upon the Santos Brothers Farm for its survival. When Goldie, Liza’s cat, is poisoned, Liza and Mrs. Wilkens race against time to discover the secret of Ravens Valley.
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Review of The Secret of Ravens Valley by Linda Norlander
The Secret of Ravens Valley by Linda Norlander is a Liza and Mrs. Wilkins sleuthing mystery and a masterful political intrigue story, cloaked in a multifaceted murder mystery. There are multiple threads of suspense, skillfully twisted and twining around the central plot. This creates the drama that propels the reader to the conclusion that the political overreach in the community of Ravens Valley is evil and poisoning the community.
The amateur sleuths are easily lovable characters and an interesting and unanticipated pairing: Mrs. Wilkins is an eighty-four year old retired librarian, and Liza Johnson is her thirty-something neighbor. One of Mrs. Wilkins’s librarian friends has died in a suspicious fire after voicing concerns regarding the town’s new book ban. Mrs. Wilkins wants to attend the funeral, look around, and ask a few questions. To do this, Mrs. Wilkins convinces her young neighbor, Liza, to accompany her on the short journey. Liza has her own personal companions, her independent minded cat Goldie, and her deceased, ghostly sister, who frequently whispers advice and questions to Liza.
During their snooping, they discover that the town of Ravens Valley has recently experienced a major economic boom when a large business moved to town. As the major employer of the region, the family-owned business began to exert influence within the social landscape of the community, asserting their purported restrictive morals and values, and gradually taking the community hostage. The warped morals begin a far-reaching, community-wide wave of crime and criminal activity.
Buckle your seat belts and hold on to your handrails as you enjoy this fast-paced book. You will enjoy the characters, the intricate plot, and the satisfying conclusion. Mrs. Wilkins and Liza are sure to pair up again to solve the next community intrigue, and as a reader, I will be waiting!
About Linda Norlander
I grew up in a family that valued both reading and writing. My father was a newspaper editor in rural Minnesota. To this day I can smell the ink and hear the rhythm of the press as it printed out the Wheaton Gazette. While my father ran the paper, my mother wrote a weekly column called “Over a Cup of Coffee.”
My first major attempt to write a novel began at age ten. I’d just finished a book that was the autobiography of a doll. I decided to write the autobiography of a puppy. To this day, I remember the opening line: “I take pen in paw (with a little difficulty) to write my memoirs.” The rest is lost to history.
I went into nursing hoping to be of service to mankind. I found my passion working in hospice. For nearly thirty years I worked to promote improvements in end-of-life care. I used my ability to put a sentence together to write several books on end-of-life care, including the award-winning “To Comfort Always: A Nurse’s Guide to End of Life Care.”
Even with two children and full-time work, I claimed time to write fiction, humor, short stories, and yes, a novel or two. When we lived on ten acres of woods in central Minnesota, I wrote a series of short humor pieces published in the Minneapolis StarTribune Sunday Magazine. The one entitled “Funeral Jell-O” won an award for humor writing. I have a certificate (somewhere) to prove it. I remember my daughter at age twelve coming home from school and glaring at me as I sat at my first computer (an Epson QX-10). “Mom are you writing again? Can’t you do something else?”
Well, the children are grown and have children of their own. We have moved from the windchill of Minnesota winters to the rain of Tacoma, Washington winters. The Epson is gone along with several other computers. I have retired from writing about end-of-life care and moved on to writing about murder (there’s got to be a connection somewhere)
Visit Linda and sign up for her “Over a Cup of Coffee” newsletter at https://www.lindanorlander.com/
