Stone Cold Case: A Rock Shop Mystery

by Catherine Dilts

Overview

Rock shop owner Morgan Iverson's discovery of human remains reopens a cold case and unhealed wounds in a Colorado mountain town, while her find of a rare gemstone sparks a dangerous treasure hunt.

The remains are those of Carlee Kruger, a prom queen who vanished fifteen years ago. Carlee's mother asks Morgan to investigate. A Sasquatch look-alike may hold the key to both Carlee's death and the gemstone, but he eludes the police, despite repeated sightings by an elderly cowboy and the rock shop's donkeys. As she uncovers the past, Morgan becomes the target of someone determined to keep the truth buried.

In book two of the Rock Shop Mystery series, amateur sleuth Morgan Iverson digs into gemstone prospecting to solve a Stone Cold Case.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781432830991
Publisher:	Gale Group
Publication date:	09/16/2015
Pages:	385
Product dimensions:	8.60(w) x 5.90(h) x 1.80(d)

About the Author

To Catherine Dilts, rock shops are like geodes--both contain hidden treasures inside their plain-as-dirt exteriors. In book one of the Rock Shop Mystery series, amateur sleuth Morgan Iverson's life won't be worth a pile of fossilized dinosaur dung unless she can dig up a killer. In book two, Morgan's discovery of human remains and a rare fossilized gemstone reopens unhealed wounds in a Colorado mountain town as she attempts to solve a Stone Cold Case. Catherine has a day job as an environmental scientist, and enjoys gardening and fishing. Her short fiction appears in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. She is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and the Western Museum of Mining and Industry.

Editorial Reviews

2015-07-15
The accidental discovery of a long-missing girl turns a town upside down. When recent widow Morgan Iverson's brother handed her the keys to his rock shop in a small Colorado mountain town, she was lucky to have help from Del, an old cowboy who assists her in running the shop and taking care of the two resident donkeys. Now, in order to improve her knowledge of rocks, Morgan looks for help elsewhere by auditing a class in geology taught by professor Esteban. During a class field trip, she stumbles on a hut containing human bones and is scared by a large man she dubs Big Foot and his dog. Soon enough the bones are identified as those of Carlee Kruger, the younger daughter of Gerda Kruger, who runs a little auto repair shop. Ever since an expansive search operation found no trace of her, the locals have assumed that Carlee, a popular beauty and prom queen, had either run away or gotten lost in the mountains. The unknown man who startled Morgan is an obvious person of interest, but Morgan's curiosity, which has landed her in trouble before (Stone Cold Dead, 2013), leads her to dig deeper into the past. Her friendship with newspaperman Kurt Willard might well lead to romance, but she and her children are having a hard time getting closure on her marriage to her late husband, which she still views through rose-colored glasses. Her investigations stir up trouble, and a rare mineral she found at the hut adds even more people to the roster of those who may have wanted Carlee, and now Morgan, dead. Dilts fleshes out her characters' personalities and motivations here, for a definite improvement over Morgan's debut.

Kirkus Reviews