Best Tess Yet

Ashland, Oregon, writer Morgan Hunt loves words the way I love words, but she has a better vocabulary. In each of her books there has been one word that stumped me; in Blinded By the Light, her third Tess Camillo mystery, that word is "osculation." Never fear, I will look it up.

I read her first two mysteries, Sticky Fingers and Fool on the Hill, with readerly abandon, enjoying their brain candy entertainment value and intelligent, wisecracking dialogue. So my expectations were high for Blinded By the Light, and I was blown away by the rich layers of tasty humor, snarky social commentary, classic who-dunnit and a B-plot romance that held water--I believed in the unlikely alliance of wordly Tess with world stage Naomi.

As in her first two novels, Morgan Hunt makes her murder scene unique; in Blinded By the Light, the victim is literally fried on a lightning field (the first two books had a snake venom death and a crucifixion to spice up the crime), with her good friend Beth on the scene and taking the fall, computer-geek Tess is yet again diving into a crime, with her happy audience along for the ride.

More Tess, more Tess!