TITLE: First to Find (Caching Out Series #1)
AUTHOR: Morgan C. Talbot
PUBLISHER: Red Adept Publishing
AVAILABILITY: Amazon US (paperback), Amazon US (Kindle e-book), Amazon UK (paperback), Amazon UK (Kindle e-book), Barnes & Noble (paperback), Barnes & Noble (Nook e-book), OmniLit (e-book), Kobo (e-book)
APPROXIMATE LENGTH: 217 pages
Recommended for readers seeking colorful murder mysteries
GENRE
Thriller/Mystery—Cozy Mystery/ Murder
Mystery
First to Find
falls comfortably in the murder mystery genre. It opens with a dead body, and
what follows is a whodunit starring a puzzle-making geocacher turned amateur
detective. The story is fairly G-rated, featuring dead bodies but nothing
gruesome and virtually no violence.
PACE
First to Find
opens as every good murder mystery should: with the discovery of a dead body.
It hooks you from the start and entertains you while going through the suspect
list, taking a few detours to expand upon the colorful lives of the characters.
PERSPECTIVE
The majority of First to Find is written from the third person limited perspective
of Margarita, the amateur detective looking to solve the murder. Several
sections are written from the third person limited perspective of her
Australian roommate, Bindi.
CONTENT REVIEW
Margarita Williams stumbles upon the
dead body of one of her fellow geocachers one morning. When the man’s widow,
untrusting of the local authorities, asks Margarita to discover the truth,
Margarita sets out on a quest to solve the mystery before anyone else turns up
dead.
Meanwhile, Bindi, Margarita’s
Australian roommate, works on a puzzle of her own. Someone stole a sculpture
from the local park around the same time as the murder took place, and she must
find the real culprit to exonerate her falsely accused friend. The question is:
are the crimes related?
First to Find
revolves around the wonderful world of geocaching, an outdoor treasure hunting
game. Players use GPS devices to navigate to coordinates and unearth
caches—hidden containers containing trinkets for players to find and logbooks
for them to sign. The local caching community featured in the novel is a group
of unique, sometimes odd individuals. One of them may be the murderer, and any
of them could be the next victim.
Margarita, haunted by past tragedies,
tries to move on with her life by actively engaging with the people around her.
Known for placing caches whose coordinates can only be unlocked by solving her
clever puzzles, she has a sharp mind for making connections. This skill makes
her the ideal candidate to solve what the bumbling local authorities cannot.
Both cool and nerdy—and cool for being nerdy—she’s an immediately likable
character whose thoughts and actions are a joy to watch.
Margarita may be the heroine of First to Find, but Bindi is far more
than just the funky sidekick. A tea-guzzling Aussie with an abnormally sharp
nose, she often outshines her costar with her charming peculiarities. Her story
line runs parallel to Margarita’s, and while the two interact a lot at home,
their missions are largely separate.
With everything going on around
them—strange new neighbors, mysterious phone calls, suspicious actions by
fellow geocachers—Margarita and Bindi face the challenge of separating the
relevant clues from the everyday oddities of living among eccentric people. First to Find is as well plotted as
mysteries get, with enough twists and red herrings to keep a reader guessing
until its surprising ending, which neatly ties up all the loose ends.
In addition, Talbot’s lilting writing
style, tailored based on which character’s perspective she’s writing from,
gives the novel a distinctive and clever tone. Whether reflecting on their
not-so-bright pasts or ruminating on their present situations, both Margarita
and Bindi are easy to sympathize with and root for.
And then there’s the geocaching aspect,
which serves as a fascinating backdrop to the mystery. I was intrigued by the
glimpse into this fun (and apparently quite popular!) sport, of which I’d known
nothing prior to reading First to Find.
Talbot does an excellent job of illustrating the sport’s ins and outs, enough
to tempt me to give it a try.
First to Find
is a delightfully entertaining mystery starring a colorful cast of quirky
characters. “Cozy” is certainly the right adjective for it, for it’s the kind
of book I wanted to curl up with and finish from chapter one.
THE NITPICKY STUFF
This book is very well edited.
This book is pretty much G-rated in
terms of sex, violence, and adult language. Dead bodies are mentioned but not
described at length.
AUTHOR INFO
[From the author’s Amazon page]
Morgan is an outdoorsy girl with a deep
and abiding love for the natural sciences. Her degrees involve English and
jujitsu. She enjoys hiking, camping, and wandering in the woods looking for the
trail to the car, but there isn't enough chocolate on the planet to bribe her
into rock climbing.
When she's not writing, she can be found making puzzles, getting lost on the way to geocaches, reading stories to her children, or taking far too many pictures of the same tree or rock.
She lives in Eastern Washington with her family.
When she's not writing, she can be found making puzzles, getting lost on the way to geocaches, reading stories to her children, or taking far too many pictures of the same tree or rock.
She lives in Eastern Washington with her family.
Disclosure:
Red Adept Publishing is the publisher of my upcoming science fiction novel, Artificial Absolutes. I bought and read
this book on my own, and the above reflects only my honest opinion.
Thank you for such a generous and thorough review, Mary! I'm pleased that you found geocaching of interest, and completely unsurprised that Bindi's antics kept you entertained. Cozy, indeed!
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