Review – A Treacherous Mix

“A Treacherous Mix” by Pacific Northwest author Kathy Herman completes her Ozark Mountain Trilogy with an intriguing story of moral failure that leads to conspiracy, deception and murder. It’s also a story of moral compromise and faith lived out against the backdrop of the Cummings family, twenty-four-year-old Hawk Cummings, a secret affair and a mysterious young woman.

The story opens with Brody Armison pretending to watch “the sailboat races on Beaver Lake” from a vantage point high up on Sure Foot Mountain. However, his spy glass was really trained on a classy appearing woman and “rugged” looking man on the blanket next to her. Brody was surprised such a mismatched couple were so obviously smitten with one another.

That’s when Brody saw a “cool looking hexacopter drone” approach and hover only to spray a “reddish appearing vapor” over the unknowing couple before two men “wearing gas masks and black coveralls” ran out of the neighboring trees. They ignored the now comatose man, grabbed the woman’s limp body and ran toward a “huge house visible through the trees” where a black Suburban sat in the driveway; slid the body into the back of the vehicle and quickly sped away. Brody had no idea that what he’d just seen would soon put him in extreme peril.

Thus, begins a roller-coaster mystery of danger, intrigue and suspense where twenty-four-year-old Hawk Cummings wakes in a meadow feeling as if “a giant spider had spewed venom onto him!” The beautiful woman he knew as Taylor had disappeared. Hawk, his head pounding, feeling dizzy and disoriented, stumbled to his feet and walked slowly through the trees toward Taylor’s house.

He found the home completely empty, stripped of all furniture and wall hangings as if Taylor had never lived there. Still confused and disoriented he wondered if Taylor had dumped him yet he knew it would take planning to empty a house of this size so quickly. That’s when he realized he knew very little about Taylor other than their secret times together.

Now the embarrassing secret he had never wanted to come out would now be exposed and he would no longer be looked at as a man with a strong moral code.  The embarrassment and shame would be hard to face. However that would be nothing compared to the unknowing danger he had just put himself, his family and friends in.

Although Herman’s well-developed plot and setting are enhanced by realistic characters that show the consequences of sin, the prayers and religious references seem heavy-handed at times as if the author were preaching instead of building a story line. Still the plot, the story and the surprising, unexpected ending are exceptional with characters that capture the intricacies and far-reaching consequences of moral failure which makes “A Treacherous Mix” a book not to miss.