Missing, Assumed Dead by Marva Dasef

When Kameron McBride receives notice she’s the last living relative of a missing man she’s never even heard of, the last thing she wants to do is head to some half-baked Oregon town to settle his affairs. But since she’s the only one available, she grudgingly agrees.

En route, she and her rental car run afoul of a couple of hillbillies and their pickup in an accident that doesn’t seem…accidental. Especially when they keep showing up wherever she goes. Lucky for her, gorgeous Deputy Mitch Caldwell lends her a hand, among other things. Her suspicions increase when she meets the probate judge, and he tries just a little too hard to buy the dead man’s worthless property.

Kam probes deeper into the town’s secrets and finds almost no one she can trust. With Mitch’s help, she peels away the layers of prejudice, suicide, murder, and insanity. Kam must find out what really happened to her dead relative before someone in this backward little town sends her to join him.

And she thought Oregon was going to be boring.

Ms. Dasef gives us a wonderful feeling for the side of Oregon we rarely see—the high desert East of the Cascades—while keeping us on our seats trying to guess what happened to Kam’s distant relative.  It becomes clear that his death was not an accident.  I wondered what made his property so special that someone would kill for it.  My mind wandered all over that desert trying to figure it out, but Ms. Dasef never gave it away, and I pride myself on being able to figure out the endings of books half-way through.  Not this one.  I had to read the whole thing!  I was about to type I had no clue but that’s not true.  I had plenty of clues, but no conclusions.  The supposedly empty high desert of Eastern Oregon was anything but.

Missing Assumed Dead is as compelling as its cover suggests. It edged out my own Rock Bound cover in the Ya Gotta Read July 2011 cover contest.  In fact, it caught my eye and made me read the book, and that’s what covers are for, isn’t it?

Price:  $5.50

Buy Link:  https://museituppublishing.com/bookstore2/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage.tpl&product_id=142&category_id=8&keyword=Missing+Assumed+Dead&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=1

Don’t forget that my blog tour is still going on.  Leave a comment here, and then hop on over to Rochelle Weber, Author and meet Killarney Sheffield, author of Guilty Kisses and Stand and Deliver Your Heart.

Here’s the link.  http://rochelleweber.blogspot.com

My next blog stop is tomorrow, Monday October 24, 2011 at Killarney Sheffield’s blog.  http://killarneysheffield.blogspot.com