Ann Shepphird

Review of Destination: Monterey
Samantha (Sam) Powers is a former Los Angeles investigative reporter turned travel columnist for the regional magazine Carmel Today. Though Sam grew up in the Monterey area, she was reluctant to move back, but her father, the ex-police chief of the city, lives there and his health is failing. Besides, the job at Carmel Today promised some intriguing perks, including a first assignment to Hawaii, which Sam enjoyed, and while there drew on her old skills to untangle a mystery. Coming off that high, Sam is disappointed when her next assignment is covering her old turf, Monterey Country. Nothing wrong with the area, but she knows it too well to get excited, and hometowns hold a few memories best forgotten. This is a great set-up for a Cozy Mystery plot. Our lead character/detective knows her setting so intimately—the places, people and history—that small perturbations in the atmosphere raise her antenna.

Carmel Today had undergone some major changes when Sam arrived, including new ownership and a new editor-in-chief. The magazine has its share of rivalries and discontents, and Sam’s take on these is amusing and insightful (the author knows her way around editorial meetings). The sudden exit of its former editor-in-chief, Buddy Wheeler, is something of a mystery, which, of course, grabs her attention. As Sam compiles the information for her story, the reader is treated to an insider’s look at Monterey from Pacific Grove and Big Sur to the Pebble Beach Pro-Am golf tournament. Shepphird cleverly onstructs the framework of her mystery as Sam reports on the incredible views from Big Sur’s Nepenthe Restaurant or the artwork of chic galleries. As the plot unfolds, Sam, too, reveals much about her own life and loves, though the romance as in all cozies remains subdued. Cozy readers should pay Destination: Monterey a visit.… (altro)