People often ask if you have to read a mystery series in order. The answer is, if the series has been written properly, you don’t. Having said that, I and a million other mystery readers still believe a series is best savored if you read the books in order.
I started reading Louise Penny’s Armand Gamache series with book nine and enjoyed it so much, I read the rest of the series in order one-by-one. I was having a difficult time and her setting, bucolic Three Pines, and her quirky characters offered me escape and comfort.
The third book in the Sabrina Salters series, Tropical Depression, is set to launch by the end of the month. I wrote No Virgin Island first, followed by Permanent Sunset. Here’s a snapshot of the series.
Disgraced former Boston meteorologist Sabrina Salter fled Nantucket after being acquitted of her husband’s murder and took refuge in the Virgin Islands where she and her friend Henry established a villa rental business. Unfortunately, trouble follows Sabrina to St. John where dead bodies keep finding her. Already unpopular with the police for being found not guilty, Sabrina must turn to the survival skills she developed as a lonely child to fight the tyranny of local law enforcement. She enlists the help of Henry and her occasional boyfriend and former lawyer, now barkeeper, Neil, to solve murders the police are blaming her for. Fortunately, Sabrina does this while enjoying the warm silky turquoise water and magnificent sunsets on St. John, together with a cast of locals who have chosen to live life barefoot. Sabrina is smart, beguiling, endearing, and determined. She’s a woman you’d like to have a margarita with and call friend, because Sabrina is one feisty woman who doesn’t give up.
I’m giving away signed hardcover copies of the first two Sabrina Salters books in a drawing to be held on September 29th. All you need to do to be eligible is comment on this post below or on Facebook or Twitter. Then you’ll be all set for Tropical Depression.
Michele Dorsey is a great writer with amazing detail of the island of St. John, USVI. If you’ve ever been or want to in the future, the settings of these books will make you want to go and discover just where they all take place. Fiction based with reality!
Shirley, thank you for your generous comment. You know personally how inspirational St. John is!