Winter Haven - Lake Secrets


Fiction - Mystery - Murder
260 Pages
Reviewed on 05/06/2023
Buy on Amazon

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Author Biography

Charlie Avera is an avid skier living outside of Denver, Colorado. His skiing experiences provided the inspiration for the first novel in the Winter Haven series, Bobcat in the Trees. When he was sixty years old his daughter asked him if he wanted to try skiing just once. From his first day on the slopes, Charlie’s love for this sport skyrocketed, and now his only regret is that he did not begin twenty years earlier.

Pam Shanahan is a life-long mystery reader and lover. She has read hundreds of cozy murder mysteries and understands what makes these novels a good read or a snoozer. Having spent forty years working as a respiratory therapist, business analyst, and software programmer, she has a keen knack for finding subtle mistakes in manuscripts and plots. Now that she is retired, she enjoys cooking, creating custom greeting cards, and teaching water aerobics. She also has a thirst for developing mystery plots and dreams of traveling to exotic places.

Winter Haven: Bobcat in the Trees was their first full-length work; Winter Haven: Lake Secrets being their first sequel.

    Book Review

Reviewed by Pikasho Deka for Readers' Favorite

Get ready for an absorbing sleuth story with Charlie Avera and Pam Shanahan's Winter Haven: Lake Secrets. When a dead body rises to the surface of the local lake of the small ski town of Winter Haven in Colorado's Rocky Mountains, Detective Brad Sanders once again finds himself as the catalyst to solve the case. After discovering that the victim, Edward Charles Bearson III, was murdered, Brad delves deeper into the investigation, following one clue after another. He finds out that Bearson was a gambling addict with a lot of baggage who might have been embezzling money from his bank. With the list of suspects rising with each new reveal, Brad must get to the bottom of the mystery soon. But doing so might put one of his loved ones in danger.

If you're looking for a cozy whodunnit murder mystery to spend your evening with, Winter Haven: Lake Secrets is the perfect book for you. Charlie Avera and Pam Shanahan weave a captivating yarn of murder and crime told through the eyes of a charismatic detective who is as intelligent as he is charming. From the Rocky Mountains of Colorado to the glittering casinos of Las Vegas, the settings change as the twists and turns of the plot take you on a captivating quest alongside Detective Brad Sanders. The authors also sprinkle humor throughout the pages with some easygoing banter between Brad and his colleagues. As someone who loves sleuth stories and whodunnit mysteries, I thoroughly enjoyed it and will gladly recommend this book.