The body of a teenage girl is fond wedged into a chimney in a cabin in the Montana mountains in April. When Sheriff Martha Ettinger and her team manages to extract the body they identify the victim as Cinderella “Cindy” Harrington who has been missing since November. Cindy's mother Etta hires privet detective Sean Stranahan to find out the truth about her daughter's death.

I read the first book in this series a little while ago so I felt well acquainted with the characters even though I haven't read the previous two books in the series. One of the reasons I was eager to read this series is that I'm a big fan of Craig Johnson's Longmire series and this felt like a perfect series to read now when I don't have any more Longmire books to read.

The case in this book was very tragic, a young girl has gone missing and now she is found dead and now Sean must figure out why she went missing and if her death was accidental or murder. Also, his relationship with Martha is a bit rocky since Martha isn't sure about a relationship with him, especially now that her son, who is living with his father, is coming for a visit. I liked the book very much, the book was well written and the case wasn't predictable, which was nice.

It was a very sad case, Etta has lost her daughter and I could really feel her pain while I read the book. Beside the case did I like to read about Sean and Martha's relationship. I'm glad that they have got to know each other a lot more since the first book, even though they now seem to be a bit estranged.

I received this copy from Viking through NetGalley in return for an honest review! Thank you! ( )

The body of a teenage girl is fond wedged into a chimney in a cabin in the Montana mountains in April. When Sheriff Martha Ettinger and her team manages to extract the body they identify the victim as Cinderella “Cindy” Harrington who has been missing since November. Cindy's mother Etta hires privet detective Sean Stranahan to find out the truth about her daughter's death.

I read the first book in this series a little while ago so I felt well acquainted with the characters even though I haven't read the previous two books in the series. One of the reasons I was eager to read this series is that I'm a big fan of Craig Johnson's Longmire series and this felt like a perfect series to read now when I don't have any more Longmire books to read.

The case in this book was very tragic, a young girl has gone missing and now she is found dead and now Sean must figure out why she went missing and if her death was accidental or murder. Also, his relationship with Martha is a bit rocky since Martha isn't sure about a relationship with him, especially now that her son, who is living with his father, is coming for a visit. I liked the book very much, the book was well written and the case wasn't predictable, which was nice.

It was a very sad case, Etta has lost her daughter and I could really feel her pain while I read the book. Beside the case did I like to read about Sean and Martha's relationship. I'm glad that they have got to know each other a lot more since the first book, even though they now seem to be a bit estranged.

I received this copy from Viking through NetGalley in return for an honest review! Thank you! ( )

Crazy Mountain Kiss is book #4 in the Sean Stranahan series by Keith McCafferty. There are books, that when you read them, you wonder where these stories have been all your life? Where have these characters been hiding? Who is this writer and why haven't you been stalking him and all his work before this moment? The characters have a honest familiarity about them that you will immediately take to heart. McCafferty's writing is a steady and gentle prose and the mystery he weaves as ingenious as it is original. Needless to add, this one took me by surprise!

In April, there is still snow on the mountains of Montana and the lone inhabitant of this secluded rental cabin wants to light a fire. But with the flue clogged, he climbs to the roof and finds, much to his dismay, a teenage girl wedged in the chimney. She is dead and her eyes have been plucked out by crows. Sheriff Martha Ettinger and her team arrive to extract the body and identify her as Cinderella "Cindy" Huntingdon, a young promising rodeo star who had gone missing the prior November. They also find out that she was pregnant as well.

"...Did I ever tell you you're a scary woman?'
'Yeah, Bob. Everyone has.' She nodded. 'Okay. Now the mother.'
At first Martha avoided the face. Her eyes traveled from the blackened feet to the flaccid belly, the small freckled breasts to either side of the zipper incision, the thin but muscular arms and surprisingly large hands with broken fingernails, where Huntington must have clawed at the walls of the chimney. She looked at the hair, lank and dirty. Finally she looked at the eye sockets. She looked at them, into them, for a long time. She wanted to believe the story of the crow, but she also remembered the opposite coin of the folklore, that sometimes something so bad had happened that the gods could not restore the soul, and the crow would then fly back to earth as an avenging angel. In that case, Martha thought, I'll be the goddamned crow..."

But Sheriff Martha Ettinger knows that there are limits to what her department can do and she needs help if she is going to find out what happened to Cinderella. She reaches out to her one time lover, fly fisherman and guide and private detective Sean Stranahan. Sean is not eager to return from Florida to help out with this case. The situation with Martha was not left on the best of terms and as for himself, he just wants to move on. But he is convinced to return and Cinderella's mother, Etta, is convinced to hire Sean to figure out what happened to her daughter.

What Stranahan unravels is far beyond what Martha first suspected. He dives into the dark secrets of a small mountain community. Into hidden sex clubs and reclusive mountain men. Into the secrets and past of one of their most powerful families as he tries to understand how a beautiful and promising young girl ended up pregnant and trapped in the chimney of a hidden away mountain cabin.

Crazy Mountain Kiss will be considered by some to be the new genre cut out by Craig Johnson and his Longmire series. A sort of western, homespun, mystery, noire. But Sean Stranahan is far from the character of Longmire and Sheriff Martha Ettinger is very much unlike any female police officer you will have encountered before. They are intricately crafted and what McCafferty does so well is that he pays the same attention to detail for his minor characters as well. There are no fillers here, you can tell he has given each one the time and effort to make them their own. The story itself is a tragedy. A great painful story of loss and grief and the result being the death of a young girl. McCafferty tells this tale very well. He offers hope but it is guarded. As fleeting as warmth on a snowy mountain night. Crazy Mountain Kiss is the story of a mother, whose only hope is in the twinkling stars of the night. It is here that Sean and Martha must find the truth. ( )

I’m not typically a western-country-mystery person, preferring the cityCrazyMountainKiss police procedurals-Harry Bosch, 87th Precinct, etc. When my mystery reading extends to the country, it’s typically the northeast, such as Archer Mayer’s Joe Gunther series in Vermont. But based on a journal recommendation I extended my reading geography to Montana and was pleasantly surprised with Crazy Mountain Kiss.

The Sean Stranahan detective series by Keith McCafferty was quite enjoyable. It certainly wasn’t gritty like Harry Bosch. I’d classify it as almost cozy. A down on his luck mystery author decides to leave L.A. for the solitude of an isolated cabin in Montana. It is April and cold so he decides to light the fireplace but smoke starts billowing into the cabin. Finding no flue lever in the cabin, he climbs up on the roof and looks down the chimney to find the blockage, which to his chagrin is a body…obviously dead.

The Hyalite County police are called in and police chief Martha Ettinger decides she needs the help of investigator Sean Stranahan who happens to be in Florida. He flies back and the small team begins the investigation. It turns out that the body is of a young girl, Cinderella Huntington, who had disappeared five months previous.

I liked the characters in Crazy Mountain Kiss. Ettinger and Stranahan had a ‘thing’ which Ettnger broke off, but neither are really over the other, so there’s some romantic tension. (Most every female character has the hots for Stranahan.) Loretta Huntington, Cindy’s mother, plays a major role as an “I won’t take no as an answer’ woman who has overcome a physical disability. The remainder of the police team are each unique and quirky.

There is some Indian folklore referenced in the book, which I found interesting. Also, some spirituality. Having lost three children, Etta has rejected formal religion for a more spiritual feeling and she is happy when she thinks that her children are in the heavens.

Crazy Mountain Kiss is a very satisfying read. ( )

I enjoy novels of the American West. After seeing the cover blurb in "Crazy Mountain Kiss," that the story would be perfect for fans of Craig Johnson, I was sold.

A member of the Madison River Liar and Fly Tiers club comes to a rented mountain cabin in order to work on his manuscript. Wanting to warm the cabin up, he checks the chimney and finds a Santa hat there. Then he climbs on the roof of the cabin and finds the body of a teenage girl wedged in the chimney.

How could the teenager get into this spot? What caused her death? These are questions that on again off again private investigator Sean Stranahan is hired to find out.

The story moves at a liesurly pace as we learn about the characters and life in the Montana mountains.

The deceased, Cindy Huntington is well described. She seemed so full of life and ready for the happiness in her future that her untimely death hits the reader and the other characters hard.

Stranahan keeps at his trade and discovers that there is an adult couples club that would rent the mountain cabin from the Forest Service. Sean begins interviewing the members of the club and comes across a group of wacky characters. Then he begins to get closer to the person responsible for Cindy's death.

It is easy to see why there is a comparison to the work of Craig Johnson. One of the characters is a consultant for a modern TV show about the American West. The show has an American Indian as the sidekick to the sheriff and the sheriff himself, being a tall man who has to duck his head to enter rooms, good comparison to Johnson's TV show, "Longmire".

The life of the characters is well portrayed but the action suffers and it is drawn out before Stranahan makes further headway into solving the crime.

McCafferty is skilled with the character descriptions and tales of their adventures but I would have enjoyed it more if he got right to solving the mystery. In addition, some of the characters seemed to be right out of a Hallmark TV movie. However, "Crazy Mountain Kiss" is an enjoyable read and excellent for a book to read on a vacation.

I received a free copy of this book in return for my review. ( )