Dru’s Short Musing:
When the cook gets “cooked” on the ranch, it’s up to the visiting team from New Oslo to figure out the who and why.

This is another fine example of a well-written and fast-paced drama taking place at a dude ranch where mischief and mayhem play a role and the team having to figure out the mystery while trying to save the place from approaching wildfires. The author did a great job in staging this whodunit with a small pool of suspects with their own emotional baggage and how it connects with the deceased. Chapter by chapter, verbiage by verbiage we learn bits of pieces along with Tessa and the gang as they try to decipher the clues that would lead to exposing the killer. With visually descriptive narrative, engaging dialogue and feeling the threat of wildfire getting closer, the heat ratcheted up a notch as the story moves forward and the tension is ready to burn as one by one, it becomes apparent who the killer is, and the team must rein them in. Overall, this is one of the best books in this terrific series and I’m happy to hear there will be more books with Tessa and her friends.

Series: A Hometown Mystery, Book 6
Genre: Cozy Mystery
Release: May 26, 2026
Format: Print, Digital
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Bookshop.org | Gemma Halliday Publishing

Book Synopsis:
From author Rosalie Spielman comes a wild western homicide!

US Army retiree Tessa Treslow is ready for a much-needed and romantic getaway with her boyfriend, Nick, to volunteer on a dude ranch for recovering combat veterans in Montana. What she gets instead is a whole crew from her little town of New Oslo, Idaho, tagging along. Her BFF Freddie, aka Deputy Frederickson, her aunt Edna, and the Prunn sisters are happy for a little vacation as well, but little do they realize it’s not going to be the rustic, idyllic visit to the range that they think it will be.

The other volunteers at the ranch are a variety of characters, from a jealous wife, to a multi-limb amputee, to a blast from Tessa’s past, and a combative and unpleasant ranch cook. When the cook ends up dead along with sides of beef in the walk-in freezer, Tessa realizes the one of them is also a murderer! With Freddie stranded in town, Tessa teams up with the New Osloans—the only ones she can be sure didn’t commit the crime—to take a closer look at the other volunteers. They soon learn that each and every cowboy wannabe knew the cook for more than just her buttery cooking, and each of them had a motive to want her dead.

To make matters much worse, not one but two wildfires are closing in on the ranch and cutting them off from the outside. What results is a locked-room style mystery where the crew from New Oslo are unsure which will prove more dangerous—a murderer or the wildfires!

FTC Full Disclosure – I received a digital ARC of this book from the author.