Book is great summer read

‘Where is Mary Bergen?’ is new detective novel

BY SONYA ELLINGBOE SELLINGBOE@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

Highlands Ranch artist and writer Craig Marshall Smith has recently published a book called “Where is Mary Bergen?” e book is set in Granby, Colorado, with a narrator/detective character named Frank Elgin, who reminds me of a writer I’ve encountered. Elgin lives with a little red dachshund named Roger ...

Next door lives a bestselling author named Peter Du Cane, who thinks most highly of himself, drinks a lot and is renting a house owned by one Laura Faircloth, who has gone o to check out a prince somewhere, a prince who discovered her via a book of nude photographs, taken by another local character, Dartmouth Powell ... And we’re only to page 17!

And I also read an account of an art class assigned to create a self-portrait e possibility of co-writing a book with Du Cane surfaces and is discarded ... and surfaces again, accompanied by entertaining chatter.

... very funny!

Smith taught art at three di erent universities over a period of 30 years and paints abstract works.

Mary Bergen was a former student, who went home for Christmas and never returned, we learn.

Elgin is asked to nd her ... He starts with checking a Du Cane book out from the library and taking it home to read to Roger.

We meet another Granby resident named Mr. Friday ... he seems to be well-supplied with factoids of all sorts ... Christmas lights were invented in 1914 by a Denver man named D.D. Sturgeon. His son was ill and couldn’t come to see the family Christmas tree. Sturgeon painted some bulbs and strung them on an outside tree so the boy could see them from his bed, according to Friday, who liked to hang out at the local diner. Modeled on a longtime friend of Smith’s ...

Somehow, Mary Bergen’s name leads to a chapter about the famous ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his friend, Charlie McCarthy — and a session between Charlie McCarthy and the very funny comedian, W. C. Fields — and a dialogue between them ...

A trip on the Zephyr to Ottumwa, Iowa is another detective job, involving a search for one Nadine Wol nger — and en route, he met Heidi Spottle ... “Everyone should take an overnight train ride.”

Back in Granby, days continue, with new encounters and characters.

Clever dialogue, quirky characters, pretty much perfect summer reading — no beach required — just a cool lemonade and a shady spot inside or out to settle in and let Smith entertain you.

“Where is Mary Bergen?” is a paperback and will tuck in a tote or suitcase handily.