Simple Deceit

Title: SIMPLE DECEIT
Author: Nancy Mehl
Publisher: Barbour Books
December 2010
ISBN: 978-1-60260-781-1
Genre: Inspirational/Mennonite/Romantic suspense

Gracie Temple has grown to love the Mennonite community in Harmony, Kansas, but she didn’t think she’d ever leave Wichita until she met and fell in love with Sam Goodrich. Now she’s moving to her late uncle’s house to do freelance graphic design work.

Her arrival in town is anything but smooth. A police officer pulls her over for seemingly no reason. A baby is found abandoned on a church steps, and when Gracie stops to investigate she is knocked unconscious. And when she arrives at her new home, someone is skulking around in the dark.

Then Gracie lands a new client, a developer interested in building an upscale retirement community in Harmony. But the news of this impending improvement has the town divided. And things begin to turn ugly…

SIMPLE DECEIT is the second book in Ms. Mehl’s Harmony series, but it easily stands alone. I didn’t like coming in on the middle of the relationship between her and Sam, so I think it might be better to read Simple Secrets first, so the romance is new and progresses more naturally.

Written in first person, it is so smoothly done, I didn’t even notice what person it was written in until I went back to check something. Gracie is the only point of view character and the reader gets to know her well. If you enjoyed Barbour’s cozy mysteries when they were being released, then you will love SIMPLE DECEIT. It is written in the same upbeat style, yet with plenty of suspense to keep the pages turning. I did figure out who villain was early on, but that wasn’t enough to stop me from reading. $12.99. 320 pages.