Into the Fire

If you've read the previous stories in this "A Murder in the Mountains Series", you know the heroine Tess Spencer is a plucky, intelligent, courageous, and tender-hearted young woman, wife, and mother who never does anything halfway. She's earned the respect of the local sheriff from previous experiences with investigations, and he wants to hire her to be his secretary.

When Tess goes to see her mom (Pearletta Vee) after she's released from serving her jail sentence for drug-related activities, Tess wants to believe she's changed as she and others insist she has, but too many things happening after Tess arrives point to the opposite – especially when Pearletta vanishes at the first evidence of trouble.

Tess's gorgeous and daring friend Rosemary drives her big pickup truck into Scot's Hollow Trailer Park to stay with Tess in her mom's old trailer after securing a job at the local drug rehab facility. She and Tess are trying to discover who killed a young man with a fatal dose of fentanyl-laced heroine while employed at the rehab center. With a plethora of suspects, Tess wants so desperately to go home to her hunky husband Thomas, her toddler daughter, and the stability of her wonderful in-laws, but she feels compelled to find the killer since her gut instinct says her mother couldn't - and wouldn't – have done it. To her relief Sheriff Zeke agrees with her.

A runaway teen girl, an abused four year old boy, a lecherous drug dealer, and the crew at the rehab facility, Tess struggles to establish the whys and whos of a murder, the distractions of a mistreated child, the memories of her unhappy and neglected childhood, and learning the exercise of forgiveness.   

As a reader, you can count on Heather Day Gilbert to give you a fast-moving, interesting tale, well-written with strong characters. Guilt by Association is no exception to her rule, and the interesting conclusion to this multi-faceted story adds an unexpected element to whenever the next book arrives. Good, entertaining series. Do recommend it for lovers of contemporary romantic suspense/mystery, light on the romance, heavy on the mystery.

Father, please continue to bless Heather's life with many more stories to tell. Encourage her as only you can do and provide all that she needs for what you have for her to do. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.