Fairway to Heaven
A Golf Lover's Mystery, No.4

By Roberta Isleib

     Series heroine and pro golfer Cassie Burdette has never mastered the art of making things easy on herself. Sorting out her game after a miserable season would be enough for most people. But Cassie being Cassie, she's also trying to sort out her tempestuous relationship with fellow pro, Mike Callahan, and has managed to boomerang apologies over some thoughtless comments about her friend Jeanine's wedding into unwilling promotion to maid of honor. Cassie's not the sort to revel in girl among girls occasions to begin with, and adding to her wedding discomfort is the fact that Mike will be escorting her down the aisle as best man. Meanwhile, with the encouragement of her shrinks (they think this head-on competition may bring a breakthrough in her game), she'll also be playing in a nearby tournament, partnered with both Mike and the other male source of trouble in her life - her long-estranged father. Things get even worse than she'd imagined once she arrives at Pinehurst, site of both the wedding and the tournament. Murder victims start popping up and the bride's father mysteriously disappears. Cassie gets picked up for DUI despite having cut back her drinking (an unwilling promise to her shrink) and finds that spending time with her father includes the presence of his jealous second wife, who is determined to prevent any normalization of relations between Cassie and her father or her two stepbrothers. Answering Jeanine's plea to investigate her father's disappearance feels like one of the few things Cassie can handle.

     You don't have to be a golf fan to enjoy this series, despite the 'golf lover mystery' label. The author clearly knows her stuff, but the stories are as much about the people who inhabit Cassie's world as the game itself. The result is a fast-paced cozy read, with a flawed heroine you can't help caring about, even as you want to give her a good shake, set in an unusual but clearly depicted world that's only far enough from the every day to be interesting. One of my favorite entries in this series.