Four of Clubs — David Downie

Four of Clubs is an adventure novel and murder mystery set in the Sierra Nevada of California in the 1970s, '80s and the present day. It's a tale of lifelong friendship, coming of age, and falling in-then out-of love.There is one woman, Serena Swallow, and three men, Pete, Don and Ed. She's rootless. They're blood brothers, best buds since boyhood. Pete and Don are fraternal twins, rejected by their parents and brought up in separate households.At Coyote Canyon, a fashionable ski resort in the High Sierra, theirs is not a love triangle. It's a club of four. Members belong till death do they part.Passion, lust, betrayal and revenge rage against brotherly love and lifelong loyalty. There are scores to settle and mysteries to unravel. Was the Christmastide avalanche that swept Serena away an accident-or murder? What about Pete and Don falling off a thousand-foot cliff in the same spot more than forty years later?The last man standing is Edward Dobbs, also known as Ed the Talking Horse. He's an unlikely detective-gawky, mild-mannered, exceptionally honest. But Ed is going to find the truth of what happened in Coyote Canyon then and now, even if it kills him.Four of Clubs takes place in the rocky, steep Sierra of California. As it unfolds, with questions of revenge, love, murder, suicide and incest, the book finds itself nearer the terrain of ancient Greek myth. Deep, mysterious and surprising-this is a page-turner.-Joanna Biggar, author of Melanie's SongA terrifying premise, a beautiful but lethal locale, and a web of erotic entanglements spanning generations and countries.... Four of Clubs casts a spinetingling spell. I couldn't put it down.-Rose Solari, author of A Secret Woman