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Lying Wonders by Susan Rogers Cooper released on Sep 24, 2004 is available now for purchase.

256 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

3 people are currently reading
45 people want to read

About the author

Susan Rogers Cooper

36 books27 followers
Susan Rogers Cooper is an American mystery novelist. A self-proclaimed "half fifth generation Texan; half Yankee", she sets her novels in Texas (the E.J. Pugh and Kimmey Kruse novels) and in Oklahoma (the Sheriff Milt Kovak novels). She is currently living in Central Texas, coming up with fresh new ways to get her characters into trouble.

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5 stars
12 (13%)
4 stars
36 (39%)
3 stars
38 (41%)
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4 (4%)
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1 (1%)
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
Profile Image for Nikki.
1,565 reviews
July 27, 2012
Maybe it's because I'm from the south and I can identify with the dialog in this series, but it really puts a big smile on my face to listen to these books. The narrator brings the characters to life for me.
1,818 reviews84 followers
April 12, 2015
I enjoyed this one. First time I have read Cooper and I was impressed. Good characters, good plot, some minor humor, a very quick read. What's not to like. I will read more of these. Recommended.
Profile Image for Lenore.
26 reviews1 follower
April 6, 2013
An entertaining, quick read. Nothing profound, but it all hangs together, good characters and plot.
1,174 reviews2 followers
June 24, 2014
This is a fun mystery with a great main character and a nice twist at the end - I thoroughly enjoyed it!
305 reviews3 followers
July 12, 2017
Good character development for such a short novel. Entertaining.
Profile Image for Megan.
1,066 reviews2 followers
February 19, 2025
Read this because I saw it on a list, but now I can't figure out what the list was! I won't read any more of the series - the writing was clunky and I just didn't get into the characters.
Profile Image for Jerry B.
1,499 reviews152 followers
July 20, 2010
Laidback Sheriff Kovak pleases in casual Cooper mystery!

Cooper fans have had to wait since 1995 for this seventh in the small-town Oklahoma Sheriff Milt Kovak series. Busy with her housewife / romance writer EJ Pugh series, featuring an equally laidback stay-at-home mom, Cooper finally dusts off Kovak to give us yet another pleasant, not-too-edgy, police procedural. But Kovak, a humble yet successful crime solver, is as apt to take his not too hardened criminals home to their mama as he is likely to throw them in the slammer.

The plot line per se, as it often is in Cooper's novels, is partially just an excuse to parade along our familiar characters and their everyday trials and tribulations. A teenage couple, having gone to visit a star-trek type cult, turns up missing. Soon the female of the pair is found murdered but few clues are forthcoming from the strange brotherhood of mostly pregnant women and male leaders in the cult compound. A former lover of Kovak's puts on the heat as it's her son that's also missing, and so the story unfolds. In the end, Kovak gets the bad guys, but meanwhile we go through his not overly cerebral processes and help from his friends to zero in on the solution.

As with Cooper's other books and other series (Pugh, and stand-up comedienne Kimmie Kruse, that latter just a two-book set), we enjoy a soft-core mystery without much blood and guts. The author's conversational writing style makes the everyday ordinary seem familiar if not special, and we proceed amiably enough to a decent conclusion generally feeling pretty good about everything and everybody. Light reading for sure, but a fun few hours! Recommended.

Profile Image for Pamela.
233 reviews
February 15, 2015
I just finished this delightful book. I must read more of the 'Sheriff Milt Kovak Mysteries'.

There are a lot of women surrounding Sheriff Milt. And most of them are giving him trouble. But the one he doesn't even meet is at the center of this mystery, Amanda Nederwald. Well, he doesn't meet her alive.

--I am really bad at reviews. I think you should read the book so I will give you the cover review.--

Trouble in Paradise
Milt Kovak's string of bad luck with women is not something he likes to dwell upon. Especially now that the Prophesy County, Oklahoma sheriff is a happily married man and a father of a toddler. But when ex-girlfriend Laura Marshall calls out of the blue to announce that her eighteen-year-old son Trent is missing and asks for help finding him, Milt realizes it can't be a good thing. The boy and his girlfriend, Amanda, had recently joined a religious retreat called the Holy Temple of the Seven Trumpets.

A ride out the the place---a million-dollar piece of land sold to the cult's leader, Brother Grigsby, for a dollar---leads to the discovery of Amanda's naked and very dead body in a remote area of the compound. while suspicion falls on Trent, Milt suspects the boy is hiding...or worse, dead. Stranger still, most of the syrupy and evasive reverend's flock are young, pregnant women. Milt puts to work his tried-and-true tactic of police detection; beating the bushes till something flies out---like a killer.

--Okay, now from me- If you want a nice little afternoon read, this mystery is for you.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews