Gone in a Flash

By Susan Rogers Cooper

After almost ruining her marriage to husband Willis months earlier because of her habit of involving herself in murder cases, E.J. Pugh is determined to stay out of drama and pay attention only to her husband, children and writing career. How hard can it be?

But through no fault of their own, E.J. and Willis are plunged into another crisis when someone chooses Willis’ truck to hide a satchel. Finding the satchel with no ID inside, their foster daughter Alicia decides to make it her new backpack. When Alicia suddenly disappears, along with the satchel, E.J. and Willis are beside themselves. Why is the satchel important and, more importantly, where is Alicia? Can they find answers before it’s too late?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Severn House Digital
• Release date: Nov 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781780104461

Susan Rogers Cooper

Susan Rogers Cooper is half-Texan, half-Yankee, and now lives with her family in a small town in central Texas. She is the author of the ‘E.J. Pugh’ series and the ‘Milt Kovak’ series, amongst other books.

Reviews for Gone in a Flash

[newsieq · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

After they drop off their son off at the University of Texas, E.J. and Willis Pugh stay overnight at an Austin hotel. While their truck is parked in the hotel lot, two inept (but nasty) criminals drop off a satchel in the Pughs’ truck, planning to retrieve it later. But E.J. and Willis take the satchel home unaware it’s even there. What ensues would be a comedy of errors if it weren’t for the bodies the two bad guys leave in their wake.The criminals, Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones (who work for Mr. Brown), figure out in whose truck they dropped the satchel, and make their way to E.J. and Willis’s home. When it becomes apparent they’re being stalked, the three Pugh daughters and their parents get caught up in a police investigation, something that E.J. can’t keep herself out of.Meanwhile, Willis’s mother is in Washington, D.C., for a Southern Baptist Convention, where she comes across a crime of her own. Vera is pretty sure her roommate has disappeared, but no one seems interested in following up. And she questions whether her own new pastor, Brother Joe, is involved with the disappearance somehow. With another senior sleuth, Vera does an investigation of her own.Gone in a Flash is lighthearted fun. I’ve read several books in another of the author’s series, and enjoyed them immensely. This book was just OK. And readers who don’t like books that are poorly edited might want to stay away from this one. I don’t go looking for errors -- but they keep cropping up in Gone in a Flash. Many of them are “spell-check” errors (tinsel for tensile; teaming for teeming). Also, someone made the choice of eliminating the periods in some abbreviations – it was consistently Mr Smith and Mr Jones – and I found that annoying, too.FYI: This book contains a lot more coarse language than most "cozies."