Thank you Minotaur Books, #partner, for the advanced copy of Hunter’s Heart Ridge in exchange for my honest review.
Publisher: Minotaur Books
Published: August 5, 2025
Summary:
In this sequel to Taylor’s lyrical series debut, Agony Hill, Detective Frank Warren and his formerly CIA-connected neighbor Alice Bellows return to investigate the death of a diplomat.
It’s November of 1965 and the second weekend of Vermont’s regular deer season. Vermont State Police detective Franklin Warren is hunting in the woods when he gets a call to return to Bethany. There’s been an accident at The Ridge Club, an exclusive men’s hunting and fishing club for congressmen, diplomats, judges, and titans of a former ambassador has been shot while out hunting. With the war in Vietnam picking up speed on the other side of the world, Warren quickly realizes that many of the club’s members are powerful men who may have ulterior motives and connections in high places.
While Warren’s suspicions about the club members build, his neighbor Alice Bellows is throwing a dinner party, preparing for Thanksgiving, and worrying about her pregnant friend and fellow widow, Sylvie Weber, whose due date is coming up. When Alice’s old handler and friend, Arthur Crannock, unexpectedly shows up in Bethany, Alice begins to wonder whether his presence has anything to do with the death at the hunting club.
As an early season snowstorm bears down on Bethany, knocking out power and phone lines and blocking the roads, Warren and his assistant, Trooper Pinky Goodrich, are trapped at the Ridge Club, likely along with a killer, and Alice, increasingly fearful that her past in the intelligence world is no longer in the past, will have to act fast to save Sylvie and her baby.
Sarah Stewart Taylor’s historical series combines the intricacy of a satisfying mystery with keen observation of a time and place during great transformation and upheaval.
My thoughts:
I cannot tell you how much I am loving this series. Historical mysteries have really become a favorite sub-genre of mine & this particular series is just spectacular! There is such a clear sense of place and time. I haven’t read too many books set in the 1960s and yet I felt myself fully immersed in both the time period and the story itself. I loved all the little details that the author placed throughout the book to remind us of the time period.
I loved the locked-room mystery that Detective Warren finds himself working on…it was so much more involved than what it first appeared to be. And the weather doesn’t help the investigation. You could feel the tension ramp up amongst those stuck at the hunting lodge where the murder took place, the older generation pitted against the younger because of what is happening in the country during this time.
While we don’t see Alice being the amateur sleuth she was in the previous book, she does find herself in an equally tense position. And this scene (don’t want to say too much for fear of spoilers) was so nerve-wracking yet also perfectly set to the time. I loved it!
This could easily be read as a stand-alone, though I highly recommend picking up the previous book, Agony Hill, to get a richer feel for both Warren and Alice. This is one series I highly recommend!!! And I hope it’s not the last we’ve seen of them!
Books in this series:
- Agony Hill
- Hunter’s Heart Ridge
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