Motorhome Murder Mysteries
The Motorhome Murder Mysteries is my series of humorous whodunits set in RV parks and campgrounds across the country. They’re not like “cozy” mysteries you may have read: no knitting circles, no grandmotherly sleuths, no recipes. Rather, our protagonists Franklin and Wendy Becker, an odd couple if ever there was one, travel across country supposedly to find themselves but stumble upon corpses instead.
Originally written as short stories, the Motorhome Murder Mysteries are growing into novellas like mold in a refrigerator: Cooked Goose (November 2020), Spacemen Don’t Camp (June 2021), Anger Management (May 2022), and The South Dakota Beech Diet (April 2023).
Perhaps you have a camping horror story worthy of being a Motorhome Murder Mystery. Watch my newsletters. I’ll be asking for your ideas!
Scroll to the bottom for links to the first chapters of the books.
Here are synopses of the first four novels in the series:
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- Family is everything. Unless they kill you. Franklin and Wendy Becker’s motorhome trip across the country skids off course when they discover Charlie Gosling’s body in a campground. Charlie’s dysfunctional family offers no shortage of suspects: the man’s ex-wife, two disgruntled brothers-in-law, a ditzy sister-in-law, and more. When the county sheriff leaves for an emergency and the Elk Rump, Idaho, townspeople fail to help, the Beckers speed ahead with their investigation. But someone is trying to stop them dead in their tire-tracks.
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- An RV trip that’s out of this world! In a remote camp outside Roswell, New Mexico, bumbling, big-hearted Franklin Becker sets out alone at midnight to find an alien spacecraft. When he comes up missing, and his ufologist friend is found dead, Franklin’s wife, Wendy, battles other UFO-seeking campers to save her husband. At least the spaceman is friendly—at first.
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- You have to be mad to be this crazy! Camping in the Colorado Rockies, Franklin and Wendy Becker find the poisoned body of a local birder. When a bedeviled park ranger is arrested, Franklin tries to help her by performing an exorcism. After that, it all goes to hell.
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- You are what you eat. Wendy Becker believes the Black Hills Outdoor Club’s healthy diet and exercise will help her husband, Franklin, focus on a new career. More importantly, she wants to fit into her now-too-tight jeans. As guests, Wendy and Franklin embark on a club backpacking trip, but when another guest is murdered, club members are concerned only about their upcoming dinner. Soon, the Beckers find themselves up to their bootlaces in trouble.
And there's more...!
Cooked Goose
The barbecue bounced like a rowboat on rough seas as the truck hauling it rounded the last turn into the campground. This particular grill housed not a porcine dinner but Lucy’s ex-husband, Charles Gosling. He was neither seasoned nor glazed but was most assuredly dead.
Spacemen Don’t Camp
Stars filled the night sky above the old CCC camp, twinkling and winking at dark tents and silent motorhomes below. Few campers lasted long in the desolate patch of no-man’s-land east of Roswell, New Mexico, but those who did stay viewed starlit nights they would remember for the rest of their lives. For camper Melvin Potkin, that memory lasted only a few hours, until he drew his last breath under eerie blue light.
Anger Management
Bert Crappert thought he knew everything about bird watching. Migration patterns of woodland ducks and hummingbirds. Mating calls of robins and the danger cries of thrush. Even the average length, to the nearest millimeter, of seagull bills. It was thus fitting that Bert’s last sighting was red-breasted sapsucker droppings, landing on his nose as the poison took effect.
The South Dakota Beech Diet
Sheila Astor Gould loved to mingle with the rich and famous. She savored tweets of their lavish lifestyles and drooled over posts of their Botox-filled faces. Rarely did she deign to spend time with the little people, everyone else on the planet. But when she learned a movie star had rented a remote cabin from the leader of the Black Hills Outdoor Club, Sheila wheedled an invitation from the club to travel to his cabin. It was a fatal mistake she, unfortunately, would not live to regret.