Maiden Rock

by Mary Logue

Overview

Deputy Sheriff Claire Watkins is back, in this tragic, personal follow up to Poison Heart. Claire’s daughter Meg is struggling with depression - after an all-night high school Halloween party, Meg’s best friend was found dead of an apparent suicide at the foot of Maiden Rock. Krista and Meg had fought at the party, over a boy, and Krista had run off. Meg feels responsible, but what shocks the deputy is that Krista was found with meth in her system. Now Claire is faced with a growing trend in her rural town - meth labs, doped-up teenagers, and young girls just looking for a way to escape their small-town lives.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781440532511
Publisher:	Gallery Books
Publication date:	08/23/2011
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	158
File size:	841 KB

About the Author

Mary Logue is an award-winning poet and the author of the acclaimed Claire Watkins mystery series. 

Editorial Reviews

When Meg, deputy sheriff Claire Watkins's 15-year-old daughter, doesn't come home from a Halloween party hosted by close friend Krista Jorgenson at the start of Logue's harrowing fifth mystery set in Pepin County, Wis. (after 2005's Poison Heart), Claire fears the worst. Early the next morning, Claire discovers Krista, still wearing her Halloween costume, lying dead at the foot of a high limestone ledge called Maiden Rock. Two hours later, Claire and Meg, who had spent the night making out with a boy in his car, have a tearful reunion. After Meg learns of Krista's apparent suicide, she blames herself because the two had had a falling out at the party. But when meth turns up in Krista's bloodstream and a woman manufacturing meth in her trailer dies in an explosive fire, it becomes clear there's a serious drug problem among the community's young people. With minimal detail, limited characterization and few plot twists, this cautionary tale may be too straightforward for many mystery readers. (Nov.)

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Publishers Weekly

Rural Pepin County, Wis., is rocked by the death of a high-school student. Is it accident, suicide or murder?Deputy Sheriff Claire Watkins gets a panicked late-night call from Krista Jorgenson's mother Emily. Claire's daughter Meg and Krista had gone to a Halloween party but haven't returned home. A frantic night of searching culminates in disaster. Krista is found dead at the bottom of the Maiden Rock cliff; Meg isn't found at all. In the meantime, a meth-lab trailer goes up in flames. The owner's body is found in the ashes, but her son was rescued by his meth-freak cousin Jason, a classmate of Krista and Meg who'd been helping his addicted aunt and a dealer called Hitch cook up a batch of the volatile brew. Eventually Meg returns home after having spent the night with Curt, Krista's boyfriend. She's wracked with guilt, since when she and Kurt told Krista at the party that they were seeing each other, Krista did not take it well. When methamphetamines are discovered in Krista's body, Claire starts a manhunt for Hitch, who almost certainly gave Krista the drug that caused her death. Although there's little mystery here, Logue (Poison Heart, 2005, etc.) provides an acutely rendered tale of addiction and the dangers of crystal meth, the drug of choice in many rural areas.

Kirkus Reviews