Reviewer Mary Lignor: Mary is a retired librarian, originally from Connecticut but now living in New Mexico. All her life Mary has loved books and has passed this love on to her daughters. Mary started working in a library when her children were young as an Assistant Librarian and ended up as its Director. Her favorite books are suspense, political intrigue and anything involving the World War II era.
Authors: Charles G. Irion and
Ronald J. Watkins
ISBN: 978-0-9841618-0-5
Click Here To Purchase Murder on Everest
This
is evidently a new series of books being publicized by Irion Books
concerning conquering the highest mountains in the world. The
first being Abandoned on Everest, which is a prequel to this one
called Murder on Everest. This series is listed in the
front of Murder with the publishing dates.
I
did not read the prequel but, so much of it is explained in the
second book that it didn't seem necessary to find the first. In
the prequel, a supermarket tabloid reporter has written a book
concerning an expedition to climb Mt. Everest sponsored by Michael
Sodoc, who is one of the richest men in the world and is about to
televise the expedition. His only son Derek Sodoc works for his
father planning documentaries concerning mountain climbing and of
course going to the highest peaks in the world in order to get good
press. This attempt to conquer Everest fails and Derek dies on
the mountain. His father is determined to find out if he was
abandoned or murdered by one of the people on the expedition and left
behind.
Michael decides to promote another
expedition using the usual suspects (making sure that the same people
are involved that were on the first) to make the story interesting.
He is blaming the man who stayed with Derek on the mountain (Scott
Devlon) until Derek's death. Also, on the ill-fated climb
are Derek's wife, her latest flame, two people who work as
photographer and writer of the documentaries, a beautiful TV reporter
(of course), a doctor and many Sherpas, yaks and climbers to make it
interesting. Their goal in Murder on Everest is to
recover Derek Sodoc's body and bring it back for burial. Even
though many expert climbers have died on Mt. Everest and been left
there as a memorial to them, Michael insists that his son be
brought back. Eventually, and before the climb, starts Sodoc's
head of security arrives and also the muckraking reporter that wrote
the first book shows up to tell the story of this trek.
Murder
on Everest takes over where Abandoned on Everest leaves
off. The story is nicely worked out with many (but long) back
stories on the characters. I'm sure that many climbing
enthusiasts out there will really love this book as the descriptions
of the climb are very realistic and very dangerous. I know that
I wouldn't want to do it and have to admire people who do. By
all accounts this mountain doesn't want to be conquered and does
everything it can to get rid of people who try. I admit
that the idea of selling these books as a twosome was a good one.
First, haul the readers in with Abandoned and then grab
them with Murder. I'd recommend this to adventure readers
more than mystery, as there is a lot of action. Starting with a
tabloid tell-all book and going into a new expedition was a good
premise. Some of the characters were very good because you
could really feel instant dislike for them (the author
of Abandoned and the security guard) and the story was a
good one. Good luck to the authors with the Summit Series.