Lake Country

Mysteries

Atmospheric, character-based cozy mystery novels set on the cold, quiet waters of the north. Written by Casey Close.

Erica Grace and Auntie Em live at in Grace Manor, a stone monstrosity located in The Lake Country of the Upper Midwest-USA. The villiage is Trinity Point, a small, beautiful peninsula town on Lake Trinity where old family prestige, local business life, and modern corporate money all compete beneath a social atmosphere of permanent observation. It is scenic enough to market, insular enough to suffocate, and memory-soaked enough that no one ever really arrives fresh. Its beaches, marinas, coves, great houses, and downtown businesses create a rich mystery landscape in which reputation matters, gossip behaves like weather, and every scandal threatens to become part of the town’s permanent mythology.

A Mystery

The Solomon sisters, Elle, Avery, and Sally, were cheated out of their multi-million dollar inheritance, so they say.

Family patriarch Bronson Solomon is dead, a hunting accident, and the sisters refuse to accept that Bronson left the family’s fortune to his mistress, Natali Rake. The sisters are family and want what they are entitled to.

Enter Erica Grace, a reluctant sleuth who sees everything except her own emotional evasions, and her mystery savant Auntie Em, who has read and improved the plots of every mystery book ever written. The Solomon sisters want to hire Erica and Em to investigate the legitimacy of the will while avoiding public scandal. But scandal quickly becomes inevitable when the police change the hunting accident to first-degree murder … with a crossbow bolt to the chest, no less. Auntie Em cannot resist and takes the case.

Applying her seasoned hand, Auntie Em finds tiny cracks in the legitimacy of the new will, leading to a big crack. Erica suspects that Bronson’s murder and the phony will is an attempt to cover up broader, deeper, more sinister crimes.

The police say it is a conspiracy when Jerald Patrick, the attorney who drew up the will, is seen meeting with Natali Rake. By the end of the day, Jerald is found dead. Natali denies she knew about the will and hates being seen as a gold digger.

Erica and Auntie Em continue their deep dive into the Solomon financial history, and the guilty party feels the heat but is brilliant at covering his/her tracks.

The mystery unfolds, and the killer realizes that after years of getting away with massive financial crimes, Erica and Auntie Em are about to reveal a cover-up involving a phony will, financial fraud, a digital alibi, evidence destroyed, multiple murders, and topped off with a clumsy frame attempt involving a maple latte (... oat milk, extra pump, no foam …).

“A witty contemporary cozy-noir detective fiction with an eccentric sleuthing partnership” - Review