Blue Smoke and Murder (St. Kilda Series #3) »

Elizabeth Lowell has written a variety of genres under a variety of names, some with her husband Evan Maxwell and some on her own. But it is her romance novels -- starring the romantic, swashbuckling Donovan family -- that have been her biggest solo success.

Jill Breck was just doing her job as a river guide when she saved the life of Lane Faroe, son of two of St. Kilda Consulting's premier operators. But when a string of ominous events—including a mysterious fire that kills her great-aunt and a furor in the Western art world raised by a dozen Breck family paintings—culminates in a threat to her life, Jill reluctantly calls in a favor.

Zach Balfour works part-time as a consultant for St. Kilda. His expertise is gathering and analyzing information from unlikely and often dangerous sources. Though he's got the skills to be a highly effective bodyguard, being a bullet catcher isn't his preferred way to spend time.

Protecting Jill will take him into familiar territory—among a strange, savagely competitive bunch of collectors who'll do anything to stay at the top. But Jill is in deeper waters than she's ever known; as she soon discovers, the perils of running wild rivers are tame compared with the hidden dangers in the high-stakes game of art collecting.

From the cozy rooms of the Breck homestead cabin to the cold multimillion-dollar galleries of the Western art circuit, Zach and Jill must race against time to unmask a ruthless killer hidden in a blue smoke of money, threats, lies, and death. . . .

Publishers Weekly

An art scandal enlivens this au-so-courant novel of romantic suspense from bestseller Lowell (Innocent as Sin), set in various locales around the American Southwest. Zach Balfour, a sexy freelancer working for St. Kilda Consulting, a security firm, falls in love with an attractive client, wilderness expert Jill Breck, while investigating Jill's recent inheritance of unsigned paintings possibly done by the late Thomas Dunstan, a legendary Western painter who had been the hard-drinking lover of Jill's artist grandmother, Justine Breck. Jill—and the paintings—are at risk because some greedy art connoisseurs realize that new Dunstans might adversely affect the price of his works slated for an upcoming Vegas auction. Lowell's keen insights into art world shenanigans serve to remind the reader about the value of art for art's sake rather than art for money's sake. (June)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.