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The Spark Beneath the Facet: C.B. Wilson’s Gem of a Mystery
There is a particular kind of authority that doesn’t announce itself but radiates through the details, a quiet assurance that comes from deep, specific knowledge. Cheryl – C.B. Wilson carries this authority the way a jeweler holds a loupe: with precision and purpose. A graduate of the Gemological Institute of America, she has spent years examining the hidden brilliance of stones and the subtle imperfections that make them human. For nearly a decade, she turned that expertise, and an abiding affection for dogs, into a series of nine cozy mysteries that made her a familiar presence on bookshelves. But even coziness, Cheryl discovered, has its limits. Her new novel, The Fire Diamond, is more refractive, a tale that gleams with the high polish of an international caper.
Set in the fictional town of Sunset Peak, Arizona, a sun-washed amalgam of Prescott’s frontier soul and Cave Creek’s bohemian charm, the novel introduces Taylor Hunter, a woman born at the fault line between crime and respectability. The estranged daughter of a world-class jewel thief, Taylor has channeled her inheritance into legitimacy, working her way up from security consultant for De Beers to running a small estate jewelry business with her twin sister, Hope. Yet she can’t escape the gravitational pull of her past. When insurance companies run out of leads and law enforcement hits a wall, Taylor becomes the one they call, the “diamond detective.”
When Sunset Peak’s most storied gem, the Peak Diamond, vanishes during the town’s centennial gala, the glittering surface of the community begins to crack. Cheryl orchestrates the plot like a jeweler setting a stone, every facet catching a different kind of light. There’s a dead broker, a perfect replica of the missing diamond, and the uneasy chemistry between Taylor and Police Chief Rocky Rockman, who happens to be the best friend of her ex-husband. “The tension just sizzles,” Cheryl says, with the enthusiasm of someone who knows how friction, like pressure, creates clarity.
But the novel’s most surprising presence comes on four legs. Glimmer, Taylor’s diamond-sniffing miniature dachshund, is no mere gimmick. “Diamond dogs are real,” Cheryl insists, recalling industrial canines trained to scent carbon deposits in South Africa. The dachshund, she explains, was a practical decision, a breed small enough to travel by plane but feisty enough to hold her own in a desert chase. In Cheryl’s telling, Glimmer and Taylor share more than proximity; they’re kindred spirits, stubborn, independent, unyieldingly loyal. Their dynamic gives the story a touch of grounded humor, a reminder that even in the high-stakes world of gem theft, companionship remains its own reward.
Cheryl’s characters speak volumes in silence, a talent she attributes to her years in sales. “You walk into a room and you just know what’s going on,” she says. That observational acuity gives her dialogue a lived-in quality, particularly between Taylor and Hope, whose twinship is less a narrative device than a telepathic shorthand. They understand each other in glances, in pauses, in what isn’t said. It’s a small but telling detail that anchors the story’s emotional core.
Place, too, is a character in The Fire Diamond. Cheryl, who has ridden horses since childhood, writes from the saddle. “It’s the rhythm,” she says, the steady cadence of hooves that frees her subconscious to spin stories. That rhythm courses through the novel’s desert passages: the dusty glow of late afternoon, the hush before a monsoon. Taylor, once a barrel racer, carries that same instinctive connection to the land, a sense that the desert, like a diamond, conceals its riches beneath layers of heat and time.
Beneath the shimmer, The Fire Diamond is ultimately about redemption. The theft that propels the plot also resurrects a ghost: Taylor’s father, absent for thirty years and still orbiting the underworld that exiled her. His return forces her to weigh loyalty against justice, love against survival. “It’s really about what family means,” Cheryl says. “And the choices you make about what matters most.”
Cheryl writes by instinct, not outline. Her characters, she admits, often seize control. “By chapter two, my plan was gone,” she laughs. “Taylor said, ‘No way, I’m not doing that.’ And then Glimmer had opinions too, that dog has a lot to say.” The resulting story feels improvised yet inevitable, like the gleam of a stone catching light from an unexpected angle.
In The Fire Diamond, C.B. Wilson doesn’t just craft a mystery, she cuts one. Each chapter is a facet polished to reveal a deeper truth: that brilliance often comes from pressure. Sometimes, the most valuable things we uncover aren’t the ones buried in the earth, but the ones unearthed within ourselves.