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AMATEUR SLEUTH/COZY/
HUMOR/RELIGIOUS/
SENIOR SLEUTH/
SOFT-BOILED MYSTERY
A TREASURE TO DIE FOR
Take two pillow cases full of empty baking powder tins and thirty pounds of stolen cash.  Put a quantity of hundred dollar bills in each can, seal lids.  Hide this mixture somewhere in Hot Springs, Arkansas.  After the mixture has seasoned for forty years, sift together all the people who know about the hidden treasure.  Cut in one investigative reporter and one unsuspecting Elderhostel coordinator.  Bake until too hot to handle, and place before Carrie McCrite and Henry King.  See who survives.  A TREASURE TO DIE FOR is the third TO DIE FOR mystery by Macavity-award nominated author Radine Trees Nehring
Read A Review:

An Elderhostel named The Downtowner Hotel and Spa in Hot Springs, Arkansas is the destination of Carrie McCrite and Henry King who plan to meet another couple there for a vacation. Carrie has brochures for all types of entertainments for this vacation including tours of the old bathhouses and crystal hunting. After some confusion with the check-in when Carrie is registered as Mrs. King and ends up sharing a room with Henry, a close friend and retired police officer, they meet the other members of their group including a man dressed in black named Everett Bogardus.

On a tour of the Fordyce Bathhouse Henry sees Everett go through an emergency exit door and follows him. Police instincts on alert, he follows Everett to the bowels of the building and loses him, but then sees someone moving about in the original mechanical room of the bathhouse - a restricted area.

Henry hurries back to the hotel to tell Carrie about Everett's mysterious movements and Carrie decides that she, too, would like to see the mechanical room.  Henry doesn't really believe that she will do it, but when she doesn't return from the ladies room in the Fordyce he goes looking and finds her inside the room with an injured man.

Events begin to take on a very speedy pace here and Carrie shows her true nettle. She is an intelligent, resourceful woman with a very strong sense of right and wrong who has no intention of letting misdeeds go unpunished. Henry also has strong feelings about criminal behavior and between the two of them they discover what the attraction of Hot Springs is for certain members of their party. 

It is very refreshing to meet protagonists of this age and character. Carrie and Henry are both strong people and they make one believe that the possibility of genuine goodness exists. The eavesdropping on their thoughts for each other was very sweet and left me with a very warm feeling. The location was one of great beauty and history, lending tidbits of enjoyable information to a good old fashioned mystery.

I highly recommend this book for its storyline and the values conveyed by its characters.

Mary Fairchild