Leaves are turning red in cottage country, and Charley Scott is putting together a Halloween pulp art installation inspired by local lake monster legends. Life imitates art when Laura, a mercenary newcomer with a controversial agenda to upgrade the dam, claims she was attacked by Charley’s monster.
Hours later, Laura is found dead by dry drowning.
Accident, murder, or something supernatural? Charley’s Shudder Pulp exhibit is meant to be immersive, but could she truly have summoned a beast from beneath the waves?
Charley and chocolatier Matt Thorn team up to investigate, but it’ll take more than seafoam toffee to bait this beast. To discern the truth among myths, Charley will have to risk it all to look the monster in the eye.
“An utterly Canadian murder mystery packed with vivid characters, autumn atmosphere, local lore, and captivating prose. I loved being transported to ‘lakeland’ with clever Charley and her crew. Serpentine and sophisticated, Shudder Pulp delivers on every level and will hook fans of Agatha Christie and Louise Penny alike.”
“In the second outing of the Charley Scott mystery series, Westermann displays a deftness for peeling back the layers of small-town Canadian intrigue that's on par with Louise Penny's Inspector Gamache series. The body drops early on, a curmudgeonly character no one is particularly sorry to see dead. But when the death is revealed to be a case of dry land drowning, a decades-old lake monster hoax suddenly takes on a dangerous life of its own. Throughout, Westermann pulls off an ambitious juggling act, highlighting the beauty and mystery of the vast Canadian landscape while also evoking the claustrophobia of living in a tiny dot of a civilization with unknown, nefarious forces lurking in your midst. The quality of Westermann's writing sets her books apart from most contemporary mysteries — each sentence is a joy to read.”