Up A Dry Creek by Avery Flynn

Up A Dry Creek. Avery Flynn. Evernight Publishing. June 2011. 168 pp. PB and E-Book. ISBN #: 9781926950518.

Claire Layton owns Harvest Bistro in Dry Creek, Nebraska. Her restaurant is highly popular because of evenings like the Full Moon Special which includes a 7-course dinner. But her tension-filled evening is about to ramp up quite a bit on her nerves. For at the end of the evening, as she is carrying the putrid garbage out to the dumpster bin, she sees a single arm sticking up from the garbage. Yes, she discovers a dead young woman who has been viciously murdered.

Within minutes, she's got the local police, really her brother Hank, and a hunk of a guy named Jake Warrick, who says he's an investigator there to make the police do their job correctly. He's a sight to behold to Claire; and while she's put off by his sassy attitude, that same demeanor and his gorgeous body are hitting her like an electric current!

But her hope of it all coming to a peaceful conclusion comes to an end with a threatening phone call and a demand for her silence. Jake and Claire hit it off in one way but there's quite a bit of verbal sparring happening that's right on the line between sexual teasing and mocking. Who is the murderer and can Jake and Claire get past their mistrust to solve the crime committed against this rich young woman? Why is the murdered woman's father such an angry, demanding man and what is the real reason he is so adamant that Jake find certain items connected to the dead gal?

Secrets thread through the past of Claire, Jake, the murdered girl, and her family. The steamy sex happening fairly quickly and the gradually revealed motives behind this crime rivet the reader to the pages, reading and flipping at an outrageous rate, just as the outrageous relationship titillates and wavers in a consistent cycle of unremitting passion.

Up A Dry Creek is hot romantic fiction with a mystery to solve that keeps one solidly engaged to the very last page. Nicely done, Avery Flynn!