What an ending to the Sharyn Howard mystery series! Sheriff Howard confounds her colleagues and family by breaking off her long-time romantic relationship with county coroner Nick Thomopolis and taking up with sleazy state senator Jack Winter.  Sharyn had previously been suspicious of Winter, seeing him as a corrupt political operative and suspecting him of involvement in her father’s death.  Now she’s his arm candy!  People give Sharyn an earful on this, but her moves are part of a plan hatched by the FBI to bring Winter to justice.  As the plan moves forward, Sharyn and her deputies contend with snow-related emergencies, office romances, and break-ins and murders that may or may not be related to Senator Winter.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

Posted: July 27th, 2009 under 2000-, 2007, Lavene, Jim and Joyce, Montgomery, Mystery, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Novels in Series, Piedmont.
Comments: none

In some workplaces, colleagues come to feel like family.  That’s how Sheriff Sharyn Howard feels about some of the men and women in her department.  When her assistant, Trudy Robinson, is linked to two murders and Trudy’s husband, a deputy sheriff, confesses to the killings to protect his wife, Sheriff Howard goes into overdrive.  She’s sure that the killings have to do with skulduggery at the speedway, but she’s hampered by the community’s anger over the death of a popular driver and the FBI’s unexplained interest in the case.  This is the eleventh Sharyn Howard mystery.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

Posted: July 19th, 2009 under 2000-, 2005, Lavene, Jim and Joyce, Montgomery, Mystery, Novels in Series, Piedmont.
Comments: none

When Sheriff Sharyn Howard leaves Diamond Springs to attend a law enforcement training retreat, her staff must solve a murder and deal with a sniper in town.  Meanwhile, Sharyn has her own problems.  One of her deputies is seriously injured when he falls down an old mine shaft, another man is found dead in the woods, and several others are killed when a car explodes.  Unfortunately, the retreat is in an abandoned mining town on isolated Sweet Potato Mountain, their radio is broken, and a vicious storm begins flooding the area streams.  This is the tenth book in the series of Sharyn Howard mysteries.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library Catalog.

Posted: May 11th, 2009 under 2000-, 2004, Lavene, Jim and Joyce, Montgomery, Mystery, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Novels in Series, Piedmont.
Comments: none

According to local legend, Navy Captain Billy Bost crashed his plane into Diamond Mountain Lake in 1944. More than 50 years later a Pulitzer Prize winning author comes to the mountain town of Diamond Mountain determined to find the plane, but he disappears and is found dead a few days later. Once the plane is raised, the police discover that the World War II pilot died of a gunshot wound, not the crash. Now Sheriff Sharyn Howard has to discover who killed the pilot and who killed the author writing about him. This is the second book in the Sharyn Howard series of mysteries.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

Posted: April 20th, 2009 under 2000, 2000-, Lavene, Jim and Joyce, Montgomery, Mystery, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Novels in Series, Piedmont.
Comments: none

It definitely isn’t Stephen King, but the plot of Jim and Joyce Lavene’s Last Dance does feature a girl named Carrie whose prom experience is less than stellar. In fact, Carrie Sommers, prom queen of Diamond Springs High School, is murdered in the school’s parking lot. Sheriff Sharyn Howard believes that the case is similar enough to a prom-night murder that her father investigated 10 years ago that she reopens the old case. With the original murder suspect on death row, local and state politicians getting involved, and her mother worried about damage to her father’s reputation, Sharyn has her hands full in this book, the first of the Sharyn Howard Mysteries set in the fictional Uwharrie Mountain town of Diamond Springs.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library Catalog.

Posted: February 19th, 2009 under 1990-1999, 1999, Lavene, Jim and Joyce, Montgomery, Mystery, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Novels in Series, Piedmont.
Comments: 1

In Last Fires Burning, the seventh mystery in this series, Sharyn Howard finds herself busily fighting fires–both literal and figurative. While her (fictional) Uwharrie Mountain town of Diamond Springs is threatened by wildfires, Sheriff Howard faces a tough reelection campaign and has two fire-related murders to solve. And her problems are not just professional; she is also dealing with ongoing disagreements with her mother, a new romance that she’s trying to keep out of the local press, and a deputy who’s in love with her.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC Library Catalog.

Posted: July 11th, 2008 under 2000-, 2003, Lavene, Jim and Joyce, Montgomery, Mystery, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Novels in Series, Piedmont.
Comments: none

• Last Dance. New York: Avalon Books, 1999.
• One Last Goodbye. New York: Avalon Books, 2000.
• The Last to Remember. New York: Avalon Books, 2001.
• Until Our Last Embrace. New York: Avalon Books, 2001.
• For the Last Time. New York: Avalon Books, 2002.
• Dreams Don’t Last. New York: Avalon Books, 2002.
• Last Fires Burning. New York: Avalon Books, 2003.
• Glory’s Last Victim. New York: Avalon Books, 2004.
• Last Rites. New York: Avalon Books, 2004.
• Last One Down. New York: Avalon Books, 2005.
• Before the Last Lap. New York: Avalon Books, 2005.
• The First Shall Be the Last. New York: Avalon Books, 2007.

Sharyn Howard is the sheriff in fictional Diamond Springs, N.C., a picturesque town in the Uwharrie Mountains. In each novel, Sharyn is on the case of a local murder that bears an eerie resemblance to, and usually proves to be connected to, a long-unsolved crime.

Posted: March 13th, 2008 under Lavene, Jim and Joyce, Montgomery, Mystery, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Novels in Series, Piedmont, Series.
Comments: none