Tahoe Ice Grave
An Owen McKenna Mystery
Todd Borg
Review: Todd Borg's third Owen McKenna thriller, Tahoe Ice Grave, effectively mixes a literary mystery within a murder mystery.
The book opens with a mesmerizing prologue. Read it twice, it's that good. These first few paragraphs serve to set the tone for the book and to introduce this well written mystery. The literary aspect of the mystery lends an interesting element to the otherwise rather ordinary plot. (Mark Twain did spend 4 months in Hawaii on assignment for the Sacramento Union, visiting Oahu, Maui, and the Big Island, though there are no published reports that he ever visited Kauai. It is interesting to speculate that he may have made a secret journey there with the manuscript referenced in this book.)
Borg's descriptive style of writing that communicates the cold and dark perspective conveyed by the title and his detailed depictions of the Tahoe landscape make the book better than the plot would suggest. Overall, Tahoe Ice Grave is a fine addition to the Owen McKenna mystery series.
Acknowledgment: Thriller Press provided a copy of Tahoe Ice Grave for this review.
Review Copyright © 2002 — Hidden Staircase Mystery Books — All Rights Reserved
Selected reviews of other mysteries by this author …
Tahoe Silence
Thriller Press (Trade Paperback), August 2007
ISBN-13: 9781931296151; ISBN-10: 1931296154
Location(s) referenced in Tahoe Ice Grave: Lake Tahoe, Nevada, Kauai, Hawaii
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Tahoe Ice Grave by Todd Borg
Publisher: Thriller Press
Format: Trade Paperback
ISBN-10: 1-931296-13-8
ISBN-13: 978-1-931296-13-7
Publication Date: August 2002
List Price: $16.95
Synopsis (from the publisher): Early one frigid morning in January a young man named Thos Kahale walked into the icy waters of Lake Tahoe and died a brutal death.
It turned into a murder.
Hired to investigate, Owen McKenna learns that the Hawaiian side of the man's family had a secret shrine hidden in a cave in the cliffs of Kauai. Owen files to Kauai and hears about a long-lost manuscript that Mark Twain left when he visited Kauai in 1866.
A priceless manuscript went missing in Hawaii over a century ago.
The manuscript, which would be worth millions, is rumored to have been lost in a hurricane. Owen suspects that it was hidden in the secret shrine.
A madman is killing everyone in his way.
As more people die, Owen tracks a vicious killer who looks like a Viking. Owen follows the Viking back to Tahoe and learns of a cave of ice that is sacred to Tahoe's Washoe Indians.
The manuscript may have turned up in Tahoe.
The killer has, too...
Thos, who was half Washoe, may have hidden the manuscript in the Tahoe cave. Only one person, whose identity is unknown, knows the answer. Owen and his Great Dane Spot have to find that person before the Viking does and they are running out of time.
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