Forging Fire
A Horseshoer Mystery
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- $24.99
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- $24.99
Publisher Description
The Third Book in the Horseshoer Mystery Series, Featuring the Incorrigible Female Horseshoer, Rainy Dale
Days before her wedding, Rainy Dale jumps at a chance to visit the fabled Black Bluff bull sale down in California, but things go awry when she is assaulted and her truck is stolen.
In this twist on the “locked-room” form, more than one mystery is hidden on the ranch where Rainy and her dog, Charlie, end up. Everyone—the owners, ranch hands, angry neighbors, and perhaps even the deliveryman who brings coke coal for the ranch’s old-fashioned forge—is harboring a damaging secret. When Rainy realizes that even her dog knows a grisly hidden truth, the stakes are raised as high as life and death.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Preston's lively third outing for charmingly unpretentious Rainy Dale (after 2019's Dead Blow), the Oregon horseshoer agrees a few day before her wedding to cook Guy Kittredge, "the jelly to my peanut butter," to deliver a "bad news bull" to a sale in California. Charley, her faithful working dog, accompanies her on the trip. After handing over the bull at the sale, Rainy is knocked unconscious by someone who takes her truck and her dog. Coming to by the side of a country road, she makes her way to the nearby Beaumont ranch, where she finds her truck and Charley. She bonds over a love of dogs with ranch owner Ivy Beaumont, though she takes a dislike to a hired hand, whom she describes as "six feet stupid in a five-nine body." Charley leads her to a place on the ranch where a body has been buried, and she's soon investigating murder and more. A subplot involving Ivy's shady L.A. lawyer husband adds further intrigue. This contemporary western mystery is a must for those who occasionally realize they prefer animals to most humans.