Review: Murder on Edisto (The Edisto Island Mysteries) by C. Hope Clark

• File Size: 612 KB
• Print Length: 272 pages
• Publisher: Bell Bridge Books (September 22, 2014)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B00NT5YVWG

Book Description


A big city detective. A lowcountry murder.

Peace, safety, a place to grieve and heal. After her husband is murdered by the Russian mob, Boston detective Callie Jean Morgan comes home to her family's cottage in South Carolina. There, she can keep their teenage son, Jeb, away from further threats.

But the day they arrive in Edisto Beach, Callie finds her childhood mentor and elderly neighbor murdered. Taunted by the killer, who repeatedly violates her home and threatens others in the community, Callie finds her new sanctuary has become her old nightmare. Despite warnings from the town's handsome police chief, Callie plunges back into detective work, pursuing a sinister stranger who may have ties to her past. He's turning a quiet paradise into a paranoid patch of sand where nobody's safe. She'll do whatever it takes to stop him. 


About the Author

http://chopeclark.com/




C. Hope Clark was born and reared in the South, from Mississippi to South Carolina with a few stints in Alabama and Georgia. The granddaughter of a Mississippi cotton farmer, Hope holds a B.S. in Agriculture with honors from Clemson University and 25 years’ experience with the U. S. Department of Agriculture to include awards for her management, all of which enable her to talk the talk of Carolina Slade, the protagonist in most of her novels. Her love of writing, however, carried her up the ranks to the ability to retire young, and she left USDA to pen her stories and freelance.

Lowcountry Bribe‘s opening chapter took first place in the Phillip Mangelsdorf Award, third place in Alabama Writer’s Conclave Competition and honorable mention in The Writing Show Chapter Competition as judged by bestselling mystery author C. J. Box. The chapter also made top three finalist status of the Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence in Mystery/Suspense sponsored by Romance Writers of America. The novel enjoyed semi-finalist status (top 100 out of 10,000) in the 2009 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest. The book went on to win the 2012 Silver Falchion Award for Crime Fiction and the 2013 EPIC E-book Award for Best Mystery.

Hope is married to a 30-year veteran of federal law enforcement, a Senior Special Agent, now a contract investigator. They met on a bribery investigation within the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the basis for the opening scene to Lowcountry Bribe. Hope and her special agent live on the rural banks of Lake Murray outside of Chapin, South Carolina, forever spinning tales on their back porch, bourbon and coke in hand, when not tending a loveable flock of Orpington and Dominiquer hens.

She also currently manages FundsforWriters.com, a weekly newsletter service she founded that reaches almost 40,000 writers to include university professors, professional journalists and published mystery authors. Writer’s Digest has recognized the site in its annual 101 Best Web Sites for Writers for 13 years.

She’s published in The Writer Magazine, Writer’s Digest, Chicken Soup, Next Step Magazine, College Bound Teen, Voices of Youth Advocates (VOYA), TURF Magazine, Landscape Management and other trade and online publications. She speaks at several writers’ conferences a year. Hope is a member of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, SC Friends of the Library, EPIC and MENSA.



My Review


C. Hope Clark is a new author to me and I am so happy that I discovered her! Murder on Edisto is a great book! It is well written and a flowing plot. I am a big fan of Edisto Island so the title is what initially attracted me.

Murder on Edisto comes complete with an interesting story line, believable characters and a beautiful setting. It is well written. I found that I had a hard time putting it down. The author, C. Hope Clark, kept me in suspense throughout most of the book. I suspected who the murderer was but she did have the murderer very cleverly disguised. I enjoyed the twists in the book.

Callie Morgan is a retired police detective who retired after her husband was murdered by Boston's Russian Mob. She had just lost an infant prior to his murder. It is amazing that she could function at all. When her Charleston area based parents gift her with the family's vacation home on Edisto Island, she and her adolescent son Jeb settle in. And then mysterious things start happening. And her dear friend is murdered. It is a constant flow of strange events that keep the reader spellbound.

Highly recommend this mystery. Always refreshing to find a new author that I like. Cannot wait for the next one in the series!