MURDER, SONORAN STYLE by Kathy McIntosh

My parents instilled in me a love of words, laughter, and nature, so perhaps it was inevitable that I became a writer of mysteries with a hint of laughter and a bias toward the environment.

My first two novels (The Havoc in Hancock series) are set in Idaho, where I lived for thirty-plus years after growing up in southern California.

I got the idea for my first book when our activist daughter invited me for breakfast with a friend of hers. A colorful character, Roadkill (he really calls himself that!) dressed in the skins of animals he’d found by the side of the road. With his permission, he became a character in Mustard’s Last Stand, where Roadkill convinces his screenwriter brother to help him fight a faux safari camp in North Idaho. He was such a reader favorite that I’m bringing him back in my next book, the second in my new series.

When we moved to Arizona, I knew I wanted to set my next novel there. I happened to spend a month outside the town of Benson, AZ, a town of 5000 souls southeast of Tucson, and read about a large proposed development that would potentially affect the San Pedro River National Conservation Area, because of its size and its proximity to that area’s water table. The dispute goes on, but it looks like the developers will win this time. Not sure what will be the result for the yellow-billed cuckoo or the San Pedro River and the San Pedro River Riparian Natural Conservation area. The book became Murder, Sonoran Style, published last year. It won honorable mention in the PSWA 2019 writing contest.

A reviewer said of my first book, Mustard’s Last Stand, “Beneath all of the crazy characters and their sometimes wild adventures lies a story with true heart and a valuable moral. There are plenty of laughs in this page turner and plenty of insights that keep the story fresh and memorable.”

I hope that’s true of all three of my books.

Blurb: Murder, Sonoran Style: An Adventure Calls Mystery

Former science prof Gabe Ramsay’s simple problem—launch a successful new career as co-owner of Adventure Calls Eco-touring—gets dicey when he discovers the body of a despised developer smack in the middle of a guide training exercise in the Sonoran desert. Since the man’s been stabbed with Gabe’s skinning knife, it’s on Gabe to find the real killer before he himself is arrested.

Link to Murder, Sonoran Style:  https://amzn.to/2IIwBrw

Kathy’s website:  https://www.KathyMcIntosh.com

Bio:

Kathy McIntosh grew up in a suburb of Los Angeles with parents who instilled a lifelong love of books and nature. They’d frequently pack the Ford Falcon with camping gear and their two daughters and head out to camp in the southern California desert, the Sierra Nevada Mountains or Arizona.

A reformed high tech marketer and former columnist on words and business writing, Kathy transformed her love of words and nature into her fiction. After many years in Idaho, in 2014 she and her husband moved to southeastern Arizona. When not enjoying the outdoors or cozied up reading, she loves to travel and explore different cultures and cuisines. Her life is savored with her husband and a Catahoula Leopard Dog/Labrador mix, the neighborhood Welcome Waggin'.