This image is the cover for the book Checking the Traps

Checking the Traps

He may have jumped. He may have been pushed. Can this mother-daughter sleuth team find the truth? “Weaves mystery, suspense and humor in equal measure.” —Val Penny, author of Hunter’s Chase

Isabel Long is still suffering from the injuries of her last investigation. But that doesn’t stop her from working at a bar or taking on a new case from Gary Beaumont, a local drug dealer who once terrorized her. Certain his half-brother didn’t jump off a bridge, Gary is convinced somebody pushed him.

With some investigative help from her ninety-three-year-old mother, Isabel soon unearths a list of suspects, including Gary’s business associates and a famous poet who plagiarized his brother’s work for an award-winning book.

But as Isabel gets embroiled in a twisted game of cat and mouse, she had better be sure she doesn’t end up caught in a trap . . .

“A twisty small-town mystery that stays with you.” —J. V. Baptie, author of The Forgotten

“Wonderful characters . . . well worth your time.” —Joseph Lewis, author of Spiral into Darkness

Joan Livingston

Joan Livingston is the author of novels for adult and young readers, including the Isabel Long Mystery Series, featuring a longtime journalist who becomes an amateur P.I. solving cold cases in rural New England. She is currently writing the eighth in the series.
 
She draws upon her own experience as a longtime journalist to create Isabel Long, a gutsy, savvy widow who uses the skills she acquired in the business to solve what appear to be impossible cases. She also draws on her deep knowledge of rural Western Massachusetts to create realistic characters and settings — from country bars (where Isabel works part-time) to a general store’s backroom where gossipy old men meet — for the series and other novels set in that area.
 
An award-winning journalist, Joan started as a reporter paid by the inch covering the rural hilltowns of Western Massachusetts before working as a columnist and editor. (The experience helped to break a long writer’s block while she raised six children.) She went on to be editor-in-chief of award-winning newspapers in New Mexico and Massachusetts. But she has since left journalism to concentrate on her own writing. She lives in Shelburne Falls, a village in Western Massachusetts.
 
For more, visit her website: www.joanlivingston.net. Follow her on:
Substack: joanlivingston.substack.com
Twitter (X): @joanlivingston
Instagram: @JoanLivingston_Author
Threads: @joanlivingston_author
Facebook: www.facebook.com/joan.livingston.12 and www.facebook.com/JoanLivingstonAuthor/
TikTok: @joanlivingston_author

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