Stone Cold Case

My wife enjoyed the book very much

Another thoroughly engaging mystery from Catherine Dilts. Once I started reading, I couldn’t put it down! Appealing characters and an intriguing mystery made me love the book from beginning to end.

Stone Cold Case is the second book in Catherine Dilts Rock Shop Mystery Series and it is fantastic. From the time I can remember I have enjoyed mystery books so this book was definitely for me! I have not read books by Catherine Dilts but now that I have, I definitely have another author to add to my must read list. I don’t usually read a book that is part of a series unless I have read the previous books but Stone Cold Case sounded too good to pass up and I am glad I didn’t pass it up. This book can definitely be read as a stand alone. Catherine Dilts does a great job making sure new readers have the details needed not to feel lost. I did not feel that the details were overdone to the point that it would bore someone who read the first book. This book had the perfect balance. This book starts a few months after the last one started with Morgan Iverson making a go of her rock shop and learning what she needs to about rocks and geology. While with a class in the forest Morgan falls into human remains and a "Bigfoot" type mountain man on the loose. Morgan dives in with her amateur sleuthing skills she finds herself getting herself into something bigger than she could imagined. Stone Cold Case is a great book! Catherine Dilts writes with authority about Colorado, geology, gems, rocks, running a business, and solving mysteries. This book grabbed a hold of me and made it very hard to put it down! I really felt like I was there as the story unfolded. Catherine Dilts kept readers guessing until the end and leaving me wanting to read more. As I stated, I did not read Catherine’s debut novel but that did not detract from my enjoyment of her book. I enjoyed the characters including Morgan’s elderly donkeys that escaped all the time. I enjoyed both the seriousness and the silliness in this novel…..I found myself laughing in lots of parts at the hi jinx Morgan found herself in. I really enjoyed this book and I think that anyone who enjoys Mystery/Suspense Fiction, you will enjoy it too! I have the first book in this series, Stone Cold Death, on my TBR pile. I cannot wait to read the next book in this series too! I give this book 5 STARS. I want to thank Catherine Dilts and Samantha Lien from Roger Charlie for this opportunity to read and review this book!

I recognize that cozy is not used these days…but there are still readers out there that don’t yet know that cozy myteries are now called "amateur sleuth mysteries." Stone Cold Case is the second in Dilts series, but each easily stands alone of course! This was certainly a fun and entertaining tale! Morgan Iverson is still pretending that she’s not interested in solving mysteries as we begin the story…but she sure does use her time and thinking in this one, especially since she found the body! Of course, it could also be because Kurt Willard who owns the local newspaper, has also taken an interest… Expect more involvement between these two, I am sure, in later novels! Morgan Iverson was unexpectedly asked to manage the Rock of Ages Shop, when her brother and his wife mysteriously too off! Morgan knew nothing about fossils and gems, and she was on a geological class tour when she found the body! Their store had a little bit of everything, including unopened geodes which a lot of students and artists loved to purchase to see what was inside…but their most valuable piece was a seventy-year-old Triceratops Horn! Everybody in town quickly began to wonder if the body was of Carlee Kruger who had vanished from town 15 years ago! Gerda, her mother, owner of the local auto mechanic shop has withdrawn from the world and has become an alcoholic who is really not pleasant to be around. Especially since she had her other daughter also leave town soon after Carlee was missing and they hadn’t seen each other since… Morgan was still learning about everything her new job entailed, but she had part-time help, Cindy, who had been helping her, as well as Del, who had worked there so long, he had now moved into the main building. Both of these characters are great to get to know, and Del, especially, has a background that keeps Morgan in suspense, wanting to know more! There are a number of different things that are happening in the story–are any or all of them related to the dead body that was found? First, there is a mountain man that was at the site where Morgan found the body. Now he was showing up at Morgan’s home site. Fortunately, their two donkeys were both just like watch dogs, and also magicians, since both had learned how to get out! Houdini had even gotten into the habit of breaking out and heading for their neighbor’s farm. Could it have anything to do with whoever was cutting the locks on their fences and then riding right into their land, and digging…maybe, prospectors? For also at the grave site, Morgan had picked up pieces of what looked to be gems, though she didn’t know what they were… When new people started dropping into the Rock of Ages, asking about what Morgan might have new, she quickly knew that word was out… Even though small particles had only been found, Del had identified it–Ammonite! He quickly urged Morgan not to tell anybody–at least until they could investigate and file a claim! Otherwise, there would be a rush of new prospectors coming into town, and it seemed that some people were already aware of it! So did that explain why various individuals from town were coming to check out what Morgan knew? They realized that the ammolite found at the burial site had clearly been brought there, just as the elephant ear plants had been. But was there ammonite in "them thear hills?!" But then seeming accidents started to happen…first Carlee’s mother, Gerda’s brakes failed…and soon so did Morgan’s… It had already been proven that both cars had been tampered with… That seemed to point to Carlee’s death as the cause for trying to get Gerda and Morgan from further investigating… There is enough complexity to the story that readers will have many potential answers to how and who had killed Carlee–her family, of course, had to be considered. But Carlee’s former fiance’ was also still in town, now married. Or was it the mountain man who had perhaps killed her accidentally and had then kept her body in the hills? Only one thing could bring this mystery out in the open… The church had planned a memorial service for Carlee, and had searched out Gerda’s other daughter and talked her into coming home. And her daughter looked just like Carlee when she had disappeared… If you enjoy playing amateur sleuth, I highly recommend you consider Stone Cold Case. It is intriguing enough to hold your attention, yet, light enough to get too deep into dangerous situations…at least it was until the climactic ending! Enjoy!