Healthy, Wealthy and Dead: A Phoebe Fairfax Mystery

A photographer for a local television station, Phoebe Fairfax is on assignment at The Ranch, an exclusive health spa in the Rocky Mountain foothills an hour’s drive from Calgary. Life at the luxury spa is thrown into disarray when the executive manager is found murdered with a sushi knife through his heart. Suspects abound. For starters, there’s the rotund Reg Pepper, an executive with the company that owns The Ranch, whose enforced adherence to one of the spa’s spartan reducing diets may have tipped him over the edge. And don’t forget Byron, the impossibly handsome cowboy, who leads the Ranch’s daily trail rides. Then there’s Dr. Heather Morrison, The Ranch’s humourless medical director, who’s worried that radical changes proposed for the place will destroy her career. Topping the list is sushi chef Ben Sugamoto whose lucrative catering contract is about to be cancelled. This odd and oddly likeable cast of characters is joined by an attack owl, an antique calliope, a couple of race horses, and an amiable, if inept, guard dog. The mix results in a comedy of manners that serves up laughter and suspense in equal measure.