Death Drop

Death Drop is Alina Adams's 2007 fourth Figure Skating Mystery, set backstage at a New York stop on a Stars on Ice tour where one of the skaters has been hospitalized after a sabotaged warmup spin. Bex Levy, now firmly established as the series' working-day-job sports researcher / amateur sleuth, has to figure out who would target a touring skater and why.

The strength of Adams's series remains the procedural texture. By the fourth entry, the supporting cast has the kind of inside-baseball weight that comes from a writer who genuinely worked in the broadcast world: the rink-side technicians, the lighting crew, the touring-show choreographers all read as observed rather than invented. The Stars on Ice setting allows Adams to put a multi-skater ensemble in close quarters for the mystery to play out.

Recommended for Figure Skating Mystery readers, for backstage-mystery fans, and for readers looking for books like Death Drop in the touring-show-as-locked-room subgenre. Four stars, and one of the best-pacing entries in the series.