Delta for Death by Michele Drier-Review and Guest Post
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ABOUT THE BOOK: Release Date May 26,2015
California is in the middle of a catastrophic drought and water managers are scrambling to find ways to conserve the resource. The Governor has proposed a plan to dig massive tunnels under Delta, a sprawling tract of islands, sloughs, farms, marinas, resorts and historic small towns. The project will ship Sacramento River water south, to the thirsty corporate farms and cities of Central and Southern California, not a popular idea in Northern California.
When two bodies turn up at a state corporation yard in the tiny Delta hamlet of Freeland, Amy Hobbes and her police reporter, Clarice, are determined to find out if water is an issue worth killing for
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REVIEW: Delta for Death is Michele Drier’s new novel. This is Book Three of the Amy Hobbs Newspaper Mysteries.
Amy Hobbs is the Managing Editor for Monroe Press in the Central Valley area of California. Her ex-husband up and left for Illinois with his pregnant girlfriend, leaving Amy and her then teenage daughter to make a life for themselves. The teenager became a graduate of UC Santa Barbara with a nursing degree as Amy continues her career. She has since moved on romantically as well, she has a casual, for the moment, relationship with a wonderfully romantic and adventurous man, Phil. Phil happens to work for the San Francisco Times.
This marvelously entertaining story develops slowly as Amy and her reporters go through their day discovering stories of murder and mayhem in this small town California area. Stories develop in interesting ways, as do the relationships between the people.
Author Michele Drier has written a wonderfully entertaining story, combining great characters, behind the scenes looks at what’s behind some of the headlines in California, murder and the many possibilities for it, as well as a developing romance. All are entwined to make a fun and interesting read.
I’ve had the privilege of reading Michele Drier’s SNAP (Kandesky Vampire Chronicles) Series, and after reading this story, I’ll have to catch up by reading the first two Amy Hobbs Mysteries as well.
Grab you favorite beverage, curl up and have a great read with this wonderful new addition to her series! Enjoy everyone, I certainly did.
Copy supplied by the author.
Reviewed by Georgianna S
What do You Know?
Many of us don’t know what we know.
That sounds like a non sequitur. Of course we know. We went to school. We work. We read. We watch television. We talk with friends.
We’re learning every day.
But lot of what we’ve learned just passes through our minds if we have no immediate use for it. Even if we don’t use it, though, it’s still there, lodged somewhere behind grocery lists, our mother’s uncle’s second wife’s phone number and birthdays of people we worked with ten years ago.
So when a writer is advised to “write what you know,” what does that mean?
The foremost idea is to set your protagonist in a career or relationship or place that you, as the author, are familiar with.
Many authors do this. I’ve chosen a protagonist for my mystery series who’s a newspaper editor. Hmmm… maybe because I spent about twenty years in that job?
And the setting for the books is California’s northern Central Valley, a place where I spent a chunk of my childhood and have lived for a quarter of a century as an adult. This deep knowledge of a career, a location and a point in time, makes it easy to close my eyes and be there.
I’ve also chosen to develop plots around roughly current news. The first book in the series, Edited for Death, is about finding masterpieces stolen by the Nazis in World War II. It was written a few years ago when pieces of stolen art, notably a Klimt work, were found. And not too long ago, George Clooney put together a movie, Monuments Men, about the group of scholars who tracked down and recovered some of the looted art.
Labeled for Death looks at the winegrape growing industry in California, a several billion dollar a year economic shot in the arm for the state…and some well-known and wealthy growers. Premium wines are made from grape varieties and some grapes bring a lot more money per ton than others. Is someone passing off inferior grapes as premium?
California’s severe drought is the backstory for Delta for Death. The governor has a plan to dig huge, deep tunnels under the Delta where the major north-south rivers join up to flow into San Francisco Bay. The tunnels will divert Sacramento River water under the Delta to ship it south to the ag lands in the lower Central Valley and eventually into the Los Angles basin. Is water in California an issue worth killing over?
Even knowing the situations and places I’m writing about, sometime small memories pop up and say, “Me too! Don’t forget about…” That’s how Amy Hobbes and her lover end up at a sports car race in Monterey in Delta for Death. Or a building in Heidelberg houses stolen art in Edited for Death. Little things I experienced, tucked away and forgot about for years.
What have you learned that you know? What small (or not!) piece of trivia is in a locked file drawer in your brain, just waiting for the key? Finding out what you know can be a great voyage of discovery.
~~Michele~~
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Michele Drier was born in Santa Cruz and is a fifth generation Californian. She’s lived and worked all over the state, calling both Southern and Northern California home. During her career in journalism—as a reporter and editor at daily newspapers—she won awards for producing investigative series.
She writes the Amy Hobbes Newspaper mysteries, Edited for Death, Labeled for Death and Delta for Death, published May 2015.
Her paranormal romance series, The Kandesky Vampire Chronicles, was named one of the best paranormal vampire series of 2014 by reviewers of the Paranormal Romance Guild. SNAP: All That Jazz, Book Eight of The Kandesky Vampire Chronicles, was awarded second place for best book of 2014.
The Kandesky Vampire Chronicles include SNAP: The World Unfolds, SNAP: New Talent, Plague: A Love Story, DANUBE: A Tale of Murder, SNAP: Love for Blood, SNAP: Happily Ever After?, SNAP: White Nights and SNAP: All That Jazz. SNAP: I, Vampire, Book Nine in the Kandesky Vampire Chronicles is scheduled for publication in 2015.
Box Set ebooks Vol 1-4 of SNAP: Kandesky Vampire Chronicles only $6.99 : Amazon.com / Amazon.ca/ Barnes and Noble/ KOBO
