Adirondack Mysteries (and Other Mountain Tales) Volume 2

Adirondack Mysteries And Other Mountain Tales: Volume 2 by Dennis Webster
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Picked this one up at a local bookstore in Lake Placid at my friend's wedding, mainly as a memento of the Lake Placid area (and because it was signed by many of the authors!) and while I can't say this book is for everyone, I had a decent enough time working through it on my lunch breaks.  Now, be forewarned, as a collection of short mysteries set in the Adirondack mountains, this book runs the gamut from pretty good to horrendous, both in writing style and content.  Interested in true crime? That's here.  Need some "Murder She Wrote"-esque tales? You got it.  Want stories about time travel? Well...that's actually featured twice.
As you can tell, I'm not a professional writer but, more often than not, I felt comfortable picking apart most of these stories like a night-school English professor.  Leaden language, dry descriptors, and cliched characters mar about 75% of these tales.  The rest, while better, won't exactly blow you away if you regularly read short stories from more established writers.
Hard to recommend this unless every book you read needs to feature northern New York landscapes or you're completely out of mysteries to read (or just happen to want a souvenir of your trip to Lake Placid like me).  Still, I was never bored or angry reading this collection, which counts for something and can think of worse ways to while away my all too-often skipped lunch breaks. OK.


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