Flyin' Solo

May 1, 2022
A class reunion leads a Nashville travel agent into danger. Campbell Hale is forced to attend her 20-year high school reunion alone when her sort-of boyfriend, homicide detective Sam Davis, catches a case. While there, she runs into Franklin "Fly" Young, the handsome football player who broke her heart at 17. Fly, now a wealthy businessman with a wife he doesn't love, offers Campbell his company's travel account, and they have a long conversation about their past and present lives. A few weeks later, after Campbell has started handling Fly's travel arrangements, she's having dinner with Sam one night at a restaurant next door to a marina when they run into Fly. He's just bought a boat and is planning to sail it to Florida for refurbishment. Sam doesn't seem happy to meet Fly, especially since it turns out that the murder he's working was an executive at Fly's company. When he drops his boat off in Florida, Fly rents a different boat to sail around for a few days, but then a storm comes up and he's lost at sea. When the boat is discovered with no one aboard, Fly's secretary, Marcella, asks Campbell, who's headed for the Bahamas, to stop in Miami and pick up Fly's laptop and anything else he left there. All hell has broken loose at the company, and there are suspicions of malfeasance. Campbell feels unsafe staying in the company's Miami condo when she realizes someone's tampered with the lock on the bedroom door. Back in Nashville, Campbell finds Fly's wife dead in her pool, and Campbell is naturally the prime suspect. She has to depend on herself to get out of trouble. A page-turner with plenty of riddles and the added fillip of nostalgia for young love.

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May 30, 2022
Peden’s pleasing third Nashville mystery (after Gone Missin’) finds Campbell Hale, the manager of a Nashville travel agency, preparing to go dateless to her 20-year high school reunion. Her friend and casual love interest, homicide detective Sam Davis, has refused to accompany her, citing an ongoing murder investigation. Campbell is not alone for long. Her first love, Fly Young, whom she hasn’t seen in 20 years, appears at the reunion, as attractive as ever, and Campbell remembers those bright days of youthful—decorous—passion and of how Fly broke her heart. Now a millionaire whose healthcare software company dominates the industry, Fly has a gorgeous wife, Erika, who has parlayed her popular diet and fitness plan into breathtaking financial success. When Fly offers Campbell the business travel account for his company, she readily accepts. Subsequently, she learns Sam is investigating the murder of Fly’s chief accountant. When a photo taken during the reunion of Fly giving Campbell a kiss is printed in a local newspaper and Erika is found dead, with Campbell beside the body, the travel agent becomes a suspect in her murder. The book’s wry humor and gentle reflections on love and second chances more than make up a whodunit that’s pretty easy to figure out. Cozy readers will be satisfied.