Huron Breeze

By Landon Beach

Kindle Edition    2021

381 pages     Mystery

Huron Breeze is the first book in the Sunrise-Side series of books by Landon Beach. Books 1 and 2 are available; book 3 will be available at the end of this month, and book 4 available at the end of 2023. Huron Breeze is, of course, located on the shoreline of Lake Huron, on the “thumb” of Michigan. Here is the plotline.

Ten years ago, Riley Cannon (a legendary author) produced three of the bestselling thrillers of all time. Then, she up and vanished, leaving the last three books of the saga not finished and producing the largest mystery in all of publishing.
Now, one decade later, there’s word from her mega-agent, the powerful and glamorous Topaz Kennedy, that there’s a new Cannon novel all but finished. However, Topaz knows the actual truth: Riley Cannon’s not even begun writing it yet. With the clock ticking down toward the publication date, there are desperate measures are needed.

At the same time, Kaj Reynard is in the sunrise-side town of Hampstead, Michigan, and emerges from Lake Huron on a cool night in June and falls face down onto the beach right next to a fading bonfire with a knife sticking out of his back. Who would murder him? And why?

That’s where veteran Hampstead PI Obediah Ben-David, a guy that has never taken on a case which he couldn’t solve, comes in. However this is a whole different sort of mystery. The one piece of evidence is the knife, which doesn’t have any prints on it. Not a soul saw or heard a boat that night, and the woman sitting next to her bonfire didn’t see anybody else in the water. It’s almost as though the deep blue waters of Lake Huron murdered Kaj Reynard, and the Huron breezes blew him up to the shore.
With Hampstead now in jeopardy of losing its summer revenue from vacationers that are chilled to their bones about a killer on the loose. Ben-David takes an apprentice on, some computer coder, named Rachel Roberts, who lives just down the beach from where Kaj came ashore. Bored by her solitary existence spent behind a screen all day, she believes becoming a PI would be a welcome sea change in her life. However neither of them could possibly foresee the web of treachery, lies, and danger that they’ll encounter.

For when the summer Huron breezes show up, the inhibitions vanish, the blood boils, and nobody’s safe.

I especially enjoyed following the crime and its solution through the eyes of Rachel Roberts. She needs a plot for her next novel, and following Ben-David as he pursues the killer is like a dream come true for her. At the same time, Ben-David enjoys helping teach Rachel detective skills. Does he know that she has a pen name and a series of novels and movies in her past? Does he understand that she is searching for a plot, rather than a new career as a detective? I am anxious to read the rest of the series to see what she decides to do with her life.Beach is a very clever, creative writer and has created a propulsive can’t stop reading plot. He said in an interview with the Real Book Spy when he wrote Huron Breeze, he intended it to be a stand-alone mystery, but an audience of readers convinced him that he had the beginnings of a series featuring Rachel Roberts and based on the Lake Huron coastline.

My own summer challenge is to read books based in the Great Lakes region. I read Famous in a Small Town which takes place on the shore of Lake Michigan, Cleveland Noir where several of the stories take place on Cleveland’s Lake Erie beachfront, and now Huron Breeze, taking place on Lake Huron. In past years, I read a couple of books based on Lake Superior, my favorite of which was The Long Shining Water, and now I need to find one based in Lake Ontario. 

 
Hope you have as much fun with Huron Breeze as I did.