BORROWING DEATH by Cathy Pegau

"A journalist with an eye for detail makes her way on the Cordova Times"

Borrowing Death

Posted: October 19, 2016

Cordova in Alaska is the location for a suffragette-based mystery. Charlotte Brody works as a journalist for the Cordova Daily Times and with a temperance league opposing the production of alcohol locally, there's plenty to get people hot and bothered. BORROWING DEATH adds an arsonist to the mix.

A hardware store is set ablaze one snowy night and the firemen are called out; sadly the owner of the store was inside and can't be saved. Charlotte and the town's law enforcement officer James Eddington need to find the arsonist before anyone else gets killed. After all, anyone's home might be next. Then there's the question of whether the hardware owner was murdered before the fire started. Was he targeted deliberately?

I enjoyed the historical detail, such as setting a newspaper edition in linotype, and the look at women's issues of the day. Charlotte has known traumas of her own but survived them, and she finds great sympathy for ladies of pleasure, whereas the upright matriarchs of town resent any mentions of indecency. Some native women and men work around town, considering an education for their children. Other characters populating the town include a thirteen year old boy who left Kansas after his family died and made his own way to Alaska. Like Charlotte, he wanted a fresh start.

Much as I enjoyed reading this tale with its well-realized and quirky location, I'm even keener to read the second in this Charlotte Brody series, because a first chapter is included at the end of BORROWING DEATH. In Murder On Location, scheduled for 2017, script-writing Charlotte gets embroiled in making dramatic motion pictures in Alaska's beautiful landscape. I think author Cathy Pegau must be really enjoying her creation of this series, with its contrasts, historical commentary, action and very understated romance. Due to some of the content I recommend BORROWING DEATH for adults or mature teens. Charlotte is an admirable heroine with a great future ahead of her both in journalism and crime investigation.

Book Summary

Suffragette and journalist Charlotte Brody is bracing herself for her first winter in the frontier town of Cordova in the Alaska Territory. But the chilling murder of a local store owner is what really makes her blood run cold. . .

After three months in Cordova, Charlotte is getting accustomed to frontier life. She is filing articles for the local paper--including a provocative editorial against Prohibition--and enjoying a reunion with her brother Michael, the town doctor and coroner. Michael's services are soon called upon when a fire claims the life of hardware store owner Lyle Fiske. A frontier firebug is suspected of arson, but when Michael determines Fiske was stabbed before his store was set ablaze, the town of Cordova has another murder to solve.

Her journalist's curiosity whetted, Charlotte begins to sort through the smoldering ruins of Lyle Fiske's life, only to discover any number of people who might have wanted him dead. As the days grow shorter, Charlotte's investigation turns increasingly complex. She may be distant from the trappings of civilization, but untangling the motives for murder will require plumbing the very depths of Charlotte's investigative acumen. . .