New mystery thriller set in Carolina Beach makes for a pleasant beach reach

Beach house renovations can cause all sorts of headaches. You never know what you'll find behind the walls: mold, or maybe a dead body.

That's the set-up for "A Caper on Carolina Beach: A Beach House Mystery" by Seth Sjostrom, a 1993 graduate of the University of North Carolina Wilmington who revisited the area for his 2021 novel "Back to Carolina."

It's part of a series and follows 2022's "Trouble on Treasure Island," set on the Florida Gulf coast.

"Caper" reunites Kate Harper, a workaholic decorator, with Nick Mason, a laid-back surfer dude and sometimes-building contractor. Their assignment is to fix up a stilted beach house, near the ocean and in easy strolling distance of the Carolina Beach Boardwalk.  

It's a great property, but one interior, non-weight-bearing wall has bad "Foo Young," in Nick's words. (He knows his drywall but is a little vague on the concept of feng shui.) It needs to go. But when Nick takes a framing hammer to start demolishing it, a skeleton falls out.

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Judging from the materials, the body looks like it's been in there for 10 to 15 years.

Naturally, the police investigate, but Kate's girl-detective genes click on. She dives into the real estate records, and the clues start to point to a rich, powerful and ruthless Wilmington family, the kind that owns its own golf course. And whoever killed the poor guy in the wall is ready to strike again.

"Caper" is not exactly a taut thriller. It meanders quite a bit, and an old-fashioned editor could have shown Sjostrom how to shorten his manuscript by 20 percent with nothing really lost. Still, it's pleasant enough. 

The novel recalls the old TV series "Moonlighting" starring Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd. Kate and Nick banter a blot, and the real suspense is when, if ever, they finally kiss and fall in love.

Sjostrom, meanwhile, should be put on retainer with the Wilmington and Beaches Convention and Visitors Bureau. "Caper" drops mentions of all the favorite Carolina Beach landmarks, as well as the Battleship North Carolina Memorial and Crystal Pier at Wrightsville Beach. Not only that, Sjostrom makes the area sound like a great place to visit.

Book review

'A CAPER ON CAROLINA BEACH: A BEACH HOUSE MYSTERY'

By Seth Sjostrom

Wolfprint Media, $19.99 paperback