Another Body In The Lake

About the Book

It is very difficult to place this book in any one genre. In the beginning it was to be an expose of the gaming industry in Lake Tahoe, circa 1950’s. But it turned into something that included romance, mystery and suspense. The story has enough twists and turns to make you feel that you were driving down Lombard Street in San Francisco. Just when you are certain you know who will appear and what were happen next, surprise, it doesn’t.

Lake Tahoe, prior to the coming of the Squaw Valley Olympics in 1960, was a hideaway and summer playground for the rich and famous, which included many so-called organized crime figures. Off the beaten track, the charm and beauty of the area was a well hidden secret.

Many locals were also privy to the beauty and charm of Lake Tahoe. It was a place for a day to get away, an evening to enjoy food prepared by master chefs, or a weekend to pretend that you were part of this summer crowd that knew the lake so well.

Katherine, the heroine, was introduced to the lake by her parents. Her father had often remarked about how deep the lake was and how dead bodies were often disposed of by simply tying a heavy weight around them and throwing them into the lake. And so, the story got its name.

The general time frame for the book is long before there were special gaming schools, in the state of Nevada, for people to become dealers of various games. Most clubs taught their own dealers. This was also long before anyone even thought of a mechanical shuffler for cards let alone used one on a regular basis. Sometimes it was a small class of one or two people and sometimes the class got as large as six at a time; this is an important historical note for people who believe that the way we do things today is the way we always did them. Small and medium sized clubs liked to hire people who were already trained, but some owners were more than happy to do their own training, so that the dealers would not have any problem with any part of any specific game that the house offered.

The story begins around the summer of Katherine’s last year of college when she returns to the lake for a summer job in the gaming industry. She ended up getting far more than she expected. Even though the owner of the casino where she worked was an old friend of her father’s, it only helped in making the story line more intense.

Katherine is a woman who has great intestinal fortitude to not only follow her heart, but to become entangled in a web of underworld activity to solve the mysterious disappearance of the man she loved.

A sequence of dream scenes, beginning on page one and continuing throughout the novel, traps the reader into a false sense of knowing what will happen and who is responsible for the chaos in Katherine’s life.

An exciting life of love and romance turns hectic and extremely painful when Katherine realizes that the family of the man, whom she loves, is rooted in organized crime. In order to try to find out exactly what happened to her love, Katherine agrees to assist the Nevada Gaming Control Board in removing the last string that tied organized crime to any casino at Lake Tahoe.

About the Author

The casinos at Lake Tahoe in the early 1960’s helped with educational expenses, paving the way for Rosalee to become versed in all aspects of life. And after a full career in law-enforcement, criminal justice and corrections, Rosalee turned to writing. Eight years of writing Op-Ed columns for the local newspaper brought her even closer wanting to finish the novel that had been swimming in her head. Work with the Nevada County Chernobyl Children’s Project has helped her to realize another dream, and she will donate to the organization for each book sold.