Wednesday, January 27, 2016

Review: "Live Free or Tri: A collection of three short mystery stories" by Judy Penz Sheluk

Live Free or Tri: a collection of three short mystery stories is exactly what it purports to be as the three short story mystery tales in this book are all good ones. At forty-five pages this very recent release is also a very fast read.

“Live Free Or Die” starts off the book where the 31 year old Jack comes to Don Mills, a suburb of Toronto, Canada. He is ostensibly there to help with their collection rates having been sent by the US Headquarters down in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. After taking each staff member of the credit department out to lunch he finally gets to 21 year old Emmy. If you already know what probably soon happens you would be right. It is a classic tale of the bad man fooling around with the naive and far younger female employee. It is the aftermath where things go very differently than what one would normally expect in such a tale.

Thirty miles outside of Toronto and a world apart is the Holland Marsh. The rural area does not have grid locked traffic, high rise condos, or all the rest of the big city nonsense. It does have seven thousand acres of rich farm county that supports crops and a few locals. It also has the isolation relatively free of traffic to make learning the special skills of how to ride a bike in a triathlon.

For Carrie Anne Camack the swimming and running parts of the triathlon she can handle. Mastering the proper technique of the clipless pedal has been far more difficult. It isn’t very long till the event in July which is why she is out and about this early Sunday morning in the spring. She had a training plan and that did not include finding a body in “Murder In The Marsh.”

A triathlon also serves as the backdrop to the final story titled “The Cycopaths.” The Cycopath Triathlon Team is working the icy waters of Sunset Point Park in Colling Wood, Ontario near Lake Huron’s Georgian Bay. Half dozen swimmers went into the water for the 750 meter practice course, but not everyone came back out of the cold water alive.

These three fast reads in Live Free or Tri: A collection of three short mystery stories feature a lot of depth and plenty of mystery. The characters involved in the tales have plenty of backstory that skillfully comes into play as the story works forward in real time. Each mystery is complex with more than one small twist the result is a highly entertaining read from start to finish.



Live Free or Tri: A collection of three short mystery stories
Judy Penz Sheluk
Self-Published
January 2016
ASIN: B01AMIV9Z4
E-Book (also available in print format)
45 Pages
$2.99


Material was recently made free to all on Amazon in e-book format where I picked it up to read and review.


Kevin R. Tipple ©2016

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