APPALACHIAN TRAILS

A “star reporter”—on the scene when a crashed Cessna explodes—sees a man run from the disaster and is determined to discover his identity and what caused the plane to blow up.

In McCoy’s debut mystery, journalist Daisy McLaren and photographer/videographer Jake Smith report on a plane crash on a remote mountain near the town of Franklin, North Carolina. Daisy sees a man race from the plane just as it explodes unexpectedly. She watches as he heads toward the Walker family’s farm. Daisy went to school with Caleb Walker “until tenth grade, when he just quit coming.” She always found the Walkers “strange, and now she wondered whether they might have something to do with the plane crash.” When she ignores Jake’s warning not to visit the family by herself, she’s met with a pack of dogs and the gun-toting patriarch demanding she get off his land. Daisy’s mother died a few years earlier in a car accident near the mountain where the plane crashed. The reporter still tries to unravel details of the accident along with the mystery of the exploding plane. When she learns about an influx of heroin in town, Daisy suspects a connection to the plane. While gun shy about relationships with men, she does open her heart to a stray cat she names Rescue. In this series opener, the hero is heavily reminiscent of Nancy Drew; both have attorney fathers and dead mothers; both enjoy tooling around town, Daisy in a Jeep, Nancy in a roadster. Both have chaste relationships with their men—Daisy with Jake, Nancy with Ned Nickerson. But while Nancy is a New Englander, Daisy is a Southerner, like the author, and images of North Carolina’s forests, mountains, and small shops are inviting. Sections on Native American legends and lore add to the story, which takes place largely in Franklin, once home to the Cherokee Nation and other tribes. The mystery itself fails to be heart-pounding, but there is much sweetness in Daisy’s relationships with others and with Rescue, who curls “like a croissant” on the couch or “wreaths” herself on a bed pillow.

An engaging and loving look at small-town Southern life with an appealing sleuth.