Alaskan attorney Maeve Malloy isn’t sure she’s cut out to be a lawyer. All she wants is to be treated like everyone else. Hiding her past, she takes a kitchen job at a remote lodge while she sorts out her life. The day after she lands at Fox Island, a tourist is killed and a rampaging bear has trapped her and the lodge’s guests inside.The locals cops can’t get to the lodge because of a storm so … storm so they ask Maeve for help. Her cover is blown and she’s thrown back into investigating the who, why, and wherefore of the murder before a killer among them can strike again.
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I love this series. Hope we see more of Maeve soon!
What an edge-of-your-seat story! “Hell and High Water” was a book that had me saying, “What can possibly happen next?” I gripped the pages as I yelled. Whew! Even though it was a slow start, the story did turn into a great mystery and thriller. I loved the array of characters; each making the story complete, including a troublesome bear!
Maeve Malloy is taking a break from being a lawyer. She just wants to get away from it all, so she takes a kitchen job at a remote lodge in Alaska. Well, to her surprise things just don’t pan out like she imagined, when there is a murder, a torrential storm and a bear prowling around the lodge.
This is my first book by Keenan Powell. She is an excellent writer. “Hell and High Water” is her third book in the Maeve Malloy Mystery series, but it can be read as a stand-alone. If you’re a fan of Agatha Christie, you will definitely enjoy reading this series.
~This book was given to me through a giveaway in exchange for a fair and honest review.~
Favorite Quotes:
His shaggy eyebrows lifted briefly, came together, wiggled, and then settled back down. They looked like caterpillars trying to escape.
Mother Superior used to say if you connected the dots on Maeve’s face, they’d spell “Erin Go Bragh.”
She surveyed the room. One narcissistic tourist with an inebriated husband, a couple of nuns, a crazy old biker chick, a New Age woman, also drunk, her pot-smoking husband, and an awkward botanist. No one normal. Just her luck.
He didn’t trust nuns. What a strange Catholic thing, women cutting off their hair, giving up sex, wearing ugly clothes. He’d seen them in flocks back in Chicago and never thought he’d have one in his home, much less as an in-law. Back when he hooked up with Bernie, Iggy wasn’t a nun, she was a cop. He wasn’t sure which was worse.
Nothing he fixed worked right afterward. He didn’t talk much. At first, Roger wondered if that was because he was stoned all the time; lately, he’d suspected it was because Lester knew he was an idiot and didn’t want anyone noticing.
My Review:
Slowly unwinding, perceptively written, and shrewdly paced – this tautly written mystery held my attention and kept me on edge and guessing throughout perusal. Packed with a bracingly odd assortment of alcoholic personalities, mostly within one extended family unit, the fatally faulty characters’ development was brutally and insightfully observant and occasionally amusing in their descriptions. These were not people most of us would invite into our homes for an enjoyable dinner party, or really, for any sane reason.
Hidden glints of levity were cleverly and unexpectedly sprinkled in to balance out the constant familial tension as well as the diabolical and heinous nature of the background issues. The histories of crimes were handled sensitively and thoughtfully despite being dishearteningly realistic and wretchedly relevant to the world we live in. This was my introduction to Ms. Keenan Powell and her uniquely flawed yet keenly intelligent, Mauve Malloy, Alaskan based J.D. Esquire. And while this is the third in the series and although I’m sure I would also enjoy reading the first two books and would have possibly gotten a bit more out of the tale if I had, this installment has the strong legs of a mogul skier and can easily stand on its own.
I didn’t realize that this was book 3 of a series until I started it. I didn’t have any problems reading it as a standalone but I think the dynamics of the main character would have been easier to understand if I had read the first two books. I have just ordered them because I enjoyed getting to know Maeve who was a real multi-faceted and interesting main character and I’d like to know more about her back ground.
Maeve is an attorney in Alaska who doesn’t think she wants to be a lawyer any longer. She decides to spend the summer working in the kitchen at remote lodge in Alaska. The people who run the lodge seem a bit strange and just as a huge storm is moving in, one of the guests is murdered. The police can’t get to the island because of the storm and ask Maeve to investigate. With her cover blown, the owners and other guests are immediately suspicious of her. She must work to find the killer, sort the lies from the truth and the innocent from the guilty.
The novel is a quick read because you won’t be able to put it down once you’ve started. There are several major surprises scattered throughout the book and I never saw them coming! Not only does the book have a murder and lots of suspicious characters but there is also a bear who seems to be intent to do harm to the humans on the island. For me, the bear was almost more frightening than the murderer.
This was a wonderful well written mystery and I’m looking forward to reading the first two books in the series.
Hell and High Water is in the great tradition of locked room mysteries. Set in a remote lodge on an Alaskan island during a raging storm, the story is kept perking along by a diverse and fascinating array of characters, a rampaging bear, and a confounding murder. The protagonist, Maeve Malloy, is a suspended attorney and recovering alcoholic who’s taken a job working in the lodge’s kitchen while she tries to figure out what’s next for her. As a favor to an acquaintance on the local police force, Maeve agrees to hold things together at the lodge until the cops can make their way safely across the bay when the storm abates. The odd couple who own the lodge, a former priest, a couple of nuns, and the other guests–and their surprising connections to one another–will keep you turning the pages of this whodunnit long into the night.