Soldier on the Porch

Elizabeth Pepperhawk & Avivah Rosen Mystery #3

by Sharon Wildwind

After a bomb destroys part of the Pisgah Mountain Veterans Administration Hospital, two bodies - one of them Avivah's former commander in Vietnam - are found in the ruins. If Avivah doesn't tell her story, more deaths will be on her conscience.

Genres: Mystery

369 pages, Hardcover

First published October 17, 2007

About the author

Sharon is The Calgary Mystery Lady. Originally from the southern United States, she came to Canada a long time ago. As a child, she read adventure stories, science fiction, and mysteries, and knew more about bush pilots than she did about social graces. It took her a while to realize that the guys always got the best adventures and the best lines, a situation she set out to remedy by making up her own stories.

After a couple of real life adventures—one involving being in the U.S. Army and one working in public health in northern Alberta—she realized it was easier to write about adventurous women than be one. Her Vietnam veterans series takes place in the early 1970s. For her three veterans—two women and one man—returning to civilian life is murder. She is also working on an as-yet-unsold series about an American woman who moves to northern Alberta looking for adventure, and boy, does she find it. Waiting in the wings is a stand-alone about a flight nurse, who has to prove she didn’t kill her patient before the police prove that she did.

Sharon also teaches writing and memoir workshops and has a burning ambition to help writers stop using their word processor like a typewriter.

Series:
* Elizabeth Pepperhawk & Avivah Rosen Mystery

Reviews

[Lucy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Elizabeth Pepperhawk (known as Pepper) is now retired from the Army, and continuing her nursing career at the Pisgah Mountain Veterans Administration Hospital. One night one of the hospital's unused buildings is destroyed in an explosion. Two bodies are found in the rubble: a 90-year-old patient who liked to sneak out for a smoke, and Major Henry Campos, who was her friend Avivah's commander during her year in Vietnam. Avivah resigned her commission after coming home and still has nightmares and PTSD from her service, and a specific incident she won't talk about. But with Campos's death, if she doesn't talk, others might die. Others have already died for this secret.
I love these characters, along with their friend ex-Green Beret Benny Kirkpatrick, who is going back to school full-time and helping take care of his girlfriend's two young sons.
Written by a former military nurse in Vietnam, she gives the characters, their situations, and the time period a feeling of reality. Somebody I might have known.
Recommended, but start at the beginning to get their history.

[Leslie Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another on the edge of my seat - reads.

[Jeffrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

A likeable mystery involves vienam veterans at a VA hospital in North Carolina. Pepper, a nurse and Akivah, a security guard are friends. Pepper and Akivah live together in a house next door to which is an old Army buddy Benny, who lives with Lorraine and her two sons. There are a bunch of other characters who know Pepper and Akivah from prior books including Col. Darby Baxter, who is Pepper's boyfriend, and Cody, who is an old patient of Pepper.

At the outset of the book, a patient at the hospital is killed in an explosion and Akivah's Vietnam commanding officer, Campos who she has not seen in years is also found dead from the explosion. It turns out that 4 other members of Akivah's military police unit have also died in explosions, and the FBI suspects that Akivah is either the killer or next.

Akivah has kept to herself a shooting in Vietnam involving all of the dead soldiers and Campos and there is some thought that this is the reason for the initial bombing. Part of the story follows this plot point.

Another part of the story involves Pepper's involvment in a test psychology group project. Here Pepper is joined by a fellow nurse, a former patient and others in a pet project of the hospital administrator.

There are plenty of red herrings in the story, and to me some of the story lines appear to come and go without any reason, but the denouement of the mystery is suprising and Pepper and Akivah, who both have flaws are interesting characters. The author appears to know a lot about the Veterans Administration and does a credible job of evoking the lives of vets in the real world.

[Nikki · Rating 4 out of 5]

Third in her series about Vietnam vets Elizabeth Pepperhawk and Avivah Rosen, SOLDIER ON THE PORCH finds Pepper and Avivah back in civilian life and working at a VA hospital in North Carolina. When an empty building blows up with a Spanish-American War vet inside, Avivah, underemployed as a security guard, is looking at the scene with a fire chief when they find another body -- and it's someone Avivah hoped never to see again, her CO in Vietnam.
SOLDIER ON THE PORCH is a very good book. The plot keeps you guessing, the characters are multi-dimensional, the setting in the Carolina mountains is beautifully described, and the problems of returning Vietnam vers are realistically dealt with. I look forward to more from Sharon Wildwind.

[Debra · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read this series more for the characters than the mystery. Not that the mystery is without interest, but the characters are intriguing.

[Hope Broadway · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this series. I love the three main characters and all of their satellite characters.