In the Northwest in the Cascade Mountains of Washington State lies the small picturesque village of Alpine. Its heritage as a logging town gives Alpine a solid if a bit rustic working class atmosphere. Everyone in this small place knows everyone else and of course knows their business. This is the kind of place where if you sneeze on one side of town you will find that everyone knows about it by the time you get into the grocery store.
Emma Lord is the owner and editor of the local Alpine newspaper, “The Alpine Advocate”. When a drunken brawl results in the death of one of the drunks in the local tavern Emma gets involved. Naturally Emma knows all the relatives and friends so this story is emotional for her. When the teenage son of the family that owns the grocery story is killed in a violent highway accident and found to be loaded up with drugs at the time things get even more emotional.
These two seemingly unrelated deaths turn out to be related. The drunk was thought to have been hit in the head by a pool cue by his antagonist but was, in fact, hit by someone else in the bar; the local body shop owner. It turns out the man conked him because he was about to report him for drug dealing. He had the teenager who was killed in the highway accident as one of his dope customers.
Poor sheriff Milo Dodge, Emma’s on again off again boyfriend had to try to figure out what was going on and it was not made easy by the conflicting testimonies of the many barroom witnesses who were mostly too inebriated to give coherent statements.
But it all comes together in the end in a hostage standoff where Emma’s reporter, Vida, is held. The teenager was her nephew and she had gone to the trailer park to confront the woman who had been running the drugs down from Canada and delivering them to the body shop owner. If this all sounds confusing it is because it is. But Mary Daheim does a great job of fitting the puzzle pieces into a clear picture at the end.
“The Alpine Uproar” really is Uproar. Daheim gives us characters that we can remember and definitely relate to. It is a fine cozy mystery that is certainly entertaining and gets an 8 of 10 on the Weaver meter.
