Christine Goff Books In Order

Publication Order of The Birdwatcher’s Mysteries Books

Christine Goff who also writes as Chris Goff is an award-winning novelist best known for the “Bird Watcher Mysteries” and the “Raisa Jordan” international thrillers. Goff was raised in a tiny mountain community of Evergreen Colorado, which is where she gets much of her inspiration for the Bird Watcher mysteries. With an outdoors loving father, she spent much of her youth four wheeling, sailing, fishing, camping, horseback riding, skiing and hiking the trails and mountains of the state. Growing up the family had bird feeders on their front lawn and the first bird that she got to know was a hummingbird that her father introduced her to. Over the years, she has won several awards for her fiction with her Bird Watcher Mystery series that was published in Japan and the United Kingdom winning the Colorado Authors League Award and making the shortlist for two Literary Awards by WILLA. Goff was the winner of the 2002 Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers Award. Gofff started out writing when she got a job writing for several Summit County, Colorado Publications some with national and regional reach. Given her talent with writing, she was soon editing ice and rock climbing guides for Chockstone Press and designing graphics for a division of the Morehouse Publishing Group known as “Living the Good News”. Besides writing, she has also been involved in teaching and has been a prominent speaker at writing workshops organized at the University of Colorado and the Colorado Free University. She has served on the national, regional, and local boards of several writing organizations such as the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers, the International Thriller Writers, Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America.

While she seems to have come out of nowhere to make a name for herself writing mysteries, her path to publication was just as ragged as that of her contemporaries. Her journey to becoming a published author started in Summit County Colorado, in a small town of less than 3000 people. With such a small populace, the town had no long fiction authors for miles around until a New York Times bestselling author known as Maggie Osborn moved into Silverthorne. Having always been interested in a writing career, Christine took the opportunity to meet with the author and suggest that she conduct a writing workshop. Osborn agreed and said she would do the workshop if she could get three other people that were interested. The workshop was set up and Maggie proved a tough but competent instructor teaching dialogue, character, and plot to her four students. Good as it was, only Christine came back after the first session and she was lucky to have the tutor give her one on one instruction. She persevered and wrote her first novel “Frozen Assets”, which was a total flop. In addition to the first novel, she had several failed attempts still sitting in her drawer that include a standalone thriller, a horror novel, and a young adult title. Nonetheless, with each title she became better until she finally got her first title “A Rant of Ravens” published in 2000.

When Christine Goff sold her first three novels to Berkley Prime Crime, she was still a rookie bird watcher. As an amateur watcher, though she could identify more than 60 species of birds that would come to feed on her feeders. However, with North America having more than 900 species she knew she had to get out to become a better writer. Her travels researching her bestselling Birdwatcher Mystery series have seen her hike the Colorado Rockies, discover bird havens in Mexico, walk the Alaskan shores, trek the Hawaiian jungles, sail the Maine islands, and canoe the Okefenokee Swamp, and the Rio Grande. With expertise in more than 250 species of birds, she can be classified as an average if not avid bird watcher. The series are your cozy though edgy cozy mysteries featuring a varied cast of bird watchers. They are fun reads with a lot of information on birds, a little mayhem, and murder, and a great cast of intriguing characters. Being environmental novels, the stories push the idea that the disasters that happen to birds can often be a reflection of the decay in human culture. Every novel in the series deals with an environmental aspect. These themes range from turf wars, poisons in the environment, fire and its effect on habitat, human activity and its effects on migratory patterns of birds, and illegal trade in peregrine falcons.

“A Rant of Ravens” is the gripping first novel of the Bird Watcher Mystery series of novels. The lead in the novels is Rachel, a girl from New York whose marriage has just crumbled. She has traveled across the country to Colorado to live at the “Bird Haven” a raptor rehabilitation center run by her aunt Miriam. Inopportunely, she arrives to stumble over a body of a reporter that specialized in birds. Then Miriam her aunt goes missing with three very expensive birds throwing Rachel into a panic. The police believe that she might be involved in the two criminal cases forcing her to try to prove her innocence and find her lost aunt that she is certain could be in danger. “A Rant of Ravens” is an entertaining cozy novel with an interesting plot line that would make for a great beach read.

“Death of A Songbird” the second novel in the series is about Lark Drummond the wealthy owner of several enterprises that include a partnership in a coffee shop and an ownership in a hotel. She is having the time of her life until she becomes witness to Esther her partner and friend being murdered through her birding scope. She will stop at nothing to find out what happened to her friend and bring the culprits to book. Trying to get to the root of the mystery, she unearths an intricate web of corruption and crime that involves the export of illegal aliens from Mexico and coffee growing. Throw in a few persons that had come into town for a birding convention and Lark is just about overwhelmed by it all. “Death of a Songbird” mixes in some very good information on the health of songbird and the growing of coffee to explain why they need to care about the effects of their favorite drink on other species. It also gives very good insights and empathy on the plight of coffee bean pickers and coffee farmers.