The Hunter Rayne highway mystery series

[R.E. Donald]

I was delighted to receive the following email from a reader regarding my Hunter Rayne highway mystery series:

“Those were the best mysteries I’ve read in a long time!! As soon as I finished the first one I bought the second and felt empty when I finished it! The characters were awesome and so there that I somehow think they are in my life and I should be bumping into them at IGA or Gibson’s Building Supplies!” Judi H., Roberts Creek, B.C.

After serving over 20 years in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and becoming a skilled detective, Hunter resigned from the force and took to the road as a long haul trucker. His ex-wife is convinced he is running away from the personal tragedy that made him leave a job he loved. Hunter himself doesn’t know why, he only knows he has to keep following the white lines.

The first mystery in the series is Slow Curve on the Coquihalla. When a well respected truck driver, the owner of a family trucking business, is found dead in his truck down a steep embankment along the mountainous Coquihalla highway in British Columbia, his distraught daughter wants to know how and why his truck left the road on an uphill curve. Persuaded to help, Hunter Rayne uncovers signs of illegal cross border activity originating in a Seattle warehouse. Hunter recruits an old friend, an outlaw biker, to infiltrate what appears to be an international smuggling ring but the wily biker starts to play his own angles.

The second mystery in the series is Ice on the Grapevine. The story opens on a July morning with the discovery of a frozen corpse at a brake check just south of the Grapevine Pass in L.A. County. Hunter, who is in southern California making a delivery, is persuaded by his irascible dispatcher, Elspeth Watson, to help clear two fellow truck drivers who are arrested for the murder. His job is made more difficult by the fact that the suspects, a newlywed couple, won’t speak up in their own defence.

The circumstantial evidence is strong, and a rookie detective from the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department is eager to score a win. The investigation crosses the Canada-U.S. border when the victim is identified as a second rate musician from Vancouver, and it turns out there were more than a few desperate people happy to see him dead, including the accused couple. Hunter has to use all his investigative skills to uncover the truth.

In addition to Amazon, both novels are available on Smashwords.com, and Slow Curve on the Coquihalla is also at Barnes & Noble, Sony, ibooks and soon to be available through Kobo. If you read them, please let me know what you think!

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