Perfect Summer Reading

Okay, I realize it is not summer yet, and the weather we have been having is not even remotely spring-like, but I still have pulled out a couple of Martha Grimes books in anticipation of some nice relaxing summer reading.  I have already read  Hotel Paradise a couple of times.  I just love this novel.  I have not read any of Martha Grimes' Richard Jury mysteries, but I happened upon this one when it came out in the mid-90s.  It is just so well done that it is a book I keep picking up to read again and again.  Twelve year old Emma Graham is the protagonist, and she is a character I have always been able to relate to. The setting is small town America.  Emma's family once owned the Hotel Paradise--once opulent, but now just run down. This is a "sort of mystery novel", but more fiction really.  Emma becomes curious about a murder that happened long ago, and does her own intevestigating.  The sequel, Cold Flat Junction is almost as good.  I have pulled that one out as well, though this will be my first time around re-reading it.  They are both on my stack beside my bed just waiting to be picked up once again!