The Red Heron by Karen DudleyMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
🎃🎃🎃🎃
First things first: this author is my friend. We volunteered together many years ago. However, if I didn't honestly enjoy her books I would read them surreptitiously and slink off without leaving a review. Here's the thing, I really do enjoy her writing.
This was another re-read for me—I first read it back when it was first published. I remember those good old days when Calgary had a huge bookstore downtown and I went to hear Karen do a reading from this novel. Her inscription on the title page brought it all back to me. But if possible, I remembered even fewer plot details of this second book than I did of the first.
You know, I got thinking about Steve Burrows' Birder Murder mysteries while I was wending my way through this book. How Burrows went for a policeman as a main character where Karen chose an amateur sleuth. But both main characters spend a fair amount of time outdoors to do their investigations and both would rather be birding. The joy of both series for me is the solid bird knowledge exhibited by the authors. (Quite a contrast to Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series, which most often leaves me muttering and spluttering about the inaccuracies.)
If you didn't share a volunteer workplace with the author, many of the character names in this volume wouldn't mean anything to you, but I got a lot of warm fuzzies reading friends' names in substantial roles. Plus I was reminded of several people who hadn't crossed my mind for decades! (George, I wonder where you are?) I seem to recall Karen revealing at one point that she used the names of those who ticked her off as the names of the murder victims. I wonder which Richard and Melanie won that honour here?
A very enjoyable stroll down memory lane.
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