Summer Club
Former investigative reporter Lydia Phillips, now an involuntary housewife, plans to spend the summer volunteering as board president of Meadow Glen Swim and Tennis Club, a local summertime haunt where families and friends can gather for the season. There’s bound to be a little stress because members of the local homeowner’s association — many of whom are also members of the club — are suing over the new tennis court lights. But Lydia, as a former reporter, thrives under pressure … right? Little does she know just how much pressure she will find herself struggling with.
With her debut novel, Summer Club (Outskirts Press), author Katherine Dean Mazerov is clearly no stranger to the summer club scene, as she records the members and activities in meticulous and often hilarious detail. The main draws of the club appear to be the tennis courts and pool, all of which are used daily between Memorial Day and Labor Day, weather and biological accidents permitting.
Besides the lawsuit hanging over the club, the other initial problem with the club seems to be that the water temperature of the pool is not quite perfect, which causes a lot of tension between the managing board and club members. There are solid reasons to have the pool both warmer and colder — or is it a case of sabotage? Maybe the ancient, badly repaired boiler is simply about to give up the ghost. The club manager may not in fact be up to the maintenance task or something nefarious might be going on. Lydia is on the case.
As the summer progresses, the troubles deepen. Someone appears to be breaking into the club at night for unscrupulous purposes, and a mysterious blue sedan follows the board members when they go home — and what is going on with those black SUVs everywhere? Lydia can barely take a breath before something else terrible is happening at her club — the electronic complaint box she unwisely installed is filling up and she is beginning to think this summer of volunteering wasn’t such a good idea after all.
The lawsuit is heating up, both sides are collecting signatures, and the club’s treasurer is losing his mind over all the expenditures. Helicopter parents hover over their precious tennis and swim team kids, and their toddlers insist on peeing down the playground slide, adding more mayhem to the day-to-day running of the club.
NEFARIOUS GOINGS-ON EMERGE
Someone has stashed a huge bag of cash under the club’s dumpster — a drug deal gone wrong, perhaps. The club’s children are turning into card sharks and playing for large sums of money. Mysterious floating doodies keep shutting down the pool, no matter its temperature. A fog of marijuana odor emanates from the Snack Shack in what must be related to the mysterious cash drop. Everyone wants keys to the club’s gates and after-hours access, and that can’t be good and must not be allowed.
As if all of this weren’t enough, a commercial realtor turns up dead in the river and his business card is found outside the club by Lydia, leading her to think his murder is related to some of the club’s many troubles. While she puts her rusty investigative skills to use to find the connection, the club’s members are attacked by stinging insects. Meanwhile, the pool is leaking, creating a stream running down a nearby street. A dog gets in and steals steaks off the grill during the party. Oh, and Lydia is being stalked by an unseen enemy as she comes dangerously close to a truth she can’t even imagine.
Summer Club has it all: a cast of colorful characters, wildly imaginative situations, sexcapades, danger, fraud and a twisty murder mystery — all wrapped into one. It’s also a wry send-up of a socioeconomic class apparently full of A-types who can’t simply relax and enjoy themselves. A perfect escape from the winter blahs, the novel will transport you to warmer days with equal doses of intrigue and humor.
Summer Club is available for purchase.
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About Katherine Dean Mazerov:
Career journalist Katherine Dean (Katie) Mazerov writes stories that resonate with people, touch their lives in a relevant way. She has been a magazine writer, worked in corporate communications for a Fortune 500 company, and written extensively on trends, market outlook and emerging technologies for the global energy industry. As an editor at The Denver Post, Katie was a member of the team that won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news reporting. Decades after launching her career path on the college newspaper, she remains passionate about writing, expanding her horizons along the way as a wife, mom, tennis player, skier, cyclist and world traveler. She can’t imagine a world without dogs. She lives in Greenwood Village, Colorado.
