Confession: I’m not a fan of competitive figure skating or sports for that matter. I always turn the TV to something else when the Winter Olympics is on. It’s just not my thing. However, I picked up Alina Adam’s first figure skating mystery, “Murder on Ice” (2003) and enjoyed the story so much that I went on to read two more books in the series.
There are a total of five books in this completed series with the last book being “Skate Crime” (2007). The books were published by Berkley Prime. The author herself worked as a figure skating researcher for several networks. This explains why the series has that authentic feel to it when the author gives us the behind the scenes look at the world of competitive figure skating. Admittedly, those were the best parts of the books overall.
The series follows figure skating researcher, Rebecca “Bex” Levy who works for the 24/7 Sports Network. Bex’s job is to know everything there is to know about the competitors who are skating in the tournaments. Bex takes up as “amateur” sleuth when the subject(s) of her research turn up unexpectedly missing or dead due to some rivalry or other. Bex’s over the top, make–us–work–for–cheap–boss, Gil Cahill, expects her to piece together a murder that the police suspiciously can’t seem to solve. All of this just to get the exclusive.
The tone of the series is one of humor. To describe Bex, she is an self-deprecating type of character. She also gives us the dirt about the figure skating industry, the rivalries and such. I must admit that some of it is eye-brow raising and funny. The mysteries aren’t all that difficult to solve but then I didn’t read these books for the mystery aspect. There are some oddball type of characters in here for comedic effect. Overall, the figure skating mysteries are fun and light reads and I don’t do light but here is an exception. If you’re in the mood for something different, by all means check out this series. Strange that the entire series is not digitized. Just a couple of books. A big fat fail.
