Synopses & Reviews
Milt Kovak, sheriff of Oklahoma's Prophesy County, has been missing from the bookshelves for too long a time. Readers who have developed a friendship with this down-to-earth hero will be delighted to find the lawman back at the old stand and, as "Kirkus Reviews has described him, "ever more simpatico."
Milt has married and has a toddler son. Then one day, Milt receives a terrified phone call from Laura Johnson, an old girlfriend who broke his heart. Laura's teenage son, Trent, went on a religious retreat of some kind with his girlfriend Amanda and has not returned. Since the dubious "church" is in Milt's county, Laura wants him to look into young Trent and Amanda's whereabouts.
What Milt finds is more than enough to alarm a mother. On the other side of a fence around the farmland deeded to the cult, Milt sees vultures circling over something in the grass. Hoping it's a cow, Milt dares the barbed wire and a suspicious bull, to find instead the body of Amanda.
Milt's investigation is barred at every turn by "Brother Grigsby," his wife, and their mostly female followers (an amazing number of whom are pregnant). Meanwhile, Laura is a shrieking hysteric, and Milt's niece sneaks incognito into the compound to do some detecting of her own.
Cooper's stories always strike a fine balance of humor and solid suspense, and her characters are as real as the neighbors down the street, although their antics are more entertaining. Milt Kovak's return is a real treat.
Review
". . .veteran Cooper's unobtrusive mastery of her little patch of Oklahoma makes other, longer whodunits look bloated." (Kirkus Reviews)
Synopsis
Lying Wonders by Susan Rogers Cooper released on Sep 24, 2004 is available now for purchase.
Synopsis
When a former girlfriend of Milt Kovak needs his help finding her missing teenage son, the sheriff of Prophesy County, Oklahoma, finds himself uncovering the deadly occurrences at a retreat of a religious cult recently joined by the boy and his girlfriend. Martin's Press.
Synopsis
Trouble in Paradise
Milt Kovak's string of bad luck with women is not something he likes to dwell upon. Especially now that the Prophesy County, Oklahoma sheriff is a happily married man and father of a toddler. But when ex-girlfriend Laura Marshall calls out of the blue to announce that her eighteen-year-old son Trent is missing and asks for help finding him, Milt realizes it can't be a good thing. The boy and his girlfriend, Amanda, had recently joined a religious retreat called the Holy Temple of the Seven Trumpets.
A ride out to the place--a million-dollar piece of land sold to the cult's leader, Brother Grigsby, for a dollar--leads to the discovery of Amanda's naked and very dead body in a remote area of the compound. While suspicion falls on Trent, Milt suspects the boy is hiding. . .or worse, dead. Stranger still, most of the syrupy and evasive reverend's flock are young, pregnant women. Milt puts to work his tried-and-true tactic of police detection: beating the bushes till something flies out--like a killer.