Cutthroat Business

Cutthroat Business is an outdoor cozy mystery, first in the Fishing for Mystery series. This first installment of approximately 65,000 words centers on Washington's Olympic Peninsula. With plenty of local scenery and an inside look at cop humor, Cutthroat Business provides a wealth of detail and fun reading. Lead character Rusty Travers guides anglers on her native Olympic Peninsula and competes on the bass tournament trail, where she is a rare species -- female. Her brother Woody is a Port Angeles cop, but Rusty never intended to get involved in investigation. . . until the day one of her clients snagged a body in the Sol Duc River. That body turns out to be former boyfriend and Forest Service officer Todd Randt. So when the police work seems to stall, Rusty and her service dog Trophy sneak to Todd's house and find his case notebooks. And the hunt is on, through poachers of fish, old growth, mushrooms, salal, and tone wood to the final confrontation with the killer. The second installment, Sole Suspect, will stay on the Olympic Peninsula to help readers really come to know the locale, before the third installment, Bass Ackward, departs to follow the bass tournanent trail.

Cutthroat Business is an outdoor cozy mystery, first in the Fishing for Mystery series. This first installment of approximately 65,000 words centers on Washington's Olympic Peninsula. With plenty of local scenery and an inside look at cop humor, Cutthroat Business provides a wealth of detail and fun reading. Lead character Rusty Travers guides anglers on her native Olympic Peninsula and competes on the bass tournament trail, where she is a rare species -- female. Her brother Woody is a Port Angeles cop, but Rusty never intended to get involved in investigation. . . until the day one of her clients snagged a body in the Sol Duc River. That body turns out to be former boyfriend and Forest Service officer Todd Randt. So when the police work seems to stall, Rusty and her service dog Trophy sneak to Todd's house and find his case notebooks. And the hunt is on, through poachers of fish, old growth, mushrooms, salal, and tone wood to the final confrontation with the killer. The second installment, Sole Suspect, will stay on the Olympic Peninsula to help readers really come to know the locale, before the third installment, Bass Ackward, departs to follow the bass tournanent trail.

Cheryl Smith grew up with writing in her blood. Her very first "book" is an illustrated guide to the monsters in her home, hand printed in crayon.Though she lived in New York state, far from the soundstages of Hollywood, her first paid work was in writing for television. She continued this for several years, but found it impossible to commit to living in Los Angeles and too difficult a career to continue long distance. She switched to nonfiction, self-syndicating columns on travel and food. As that market slowly dried up, she switched topics to dogs, and found something she could stay with. After publishing more than a dozen books and hundreds of articles in all the major dog magazines and beyond, winning a wallful of awards in the process, she grew restless. So now she has moved back to her original love for fiction, this time in the form of mystery. Using the magnificent scenery and history of her adopted Olympic Peninsula in Washington state, and a family hobby of fishing, she has developed the Fishing for Mystery series.