Beneath the Stains of Time: Lion's Den: "Circus in the Sky" (2000) by Edward D...

Beneath the Stains of Time: Lion's Den: "Circus in the Sky" (2000) by Edward D...: Back in March, I reviewed a short parody story by Jon L. Breen , entitled " The Problem of the Vanishing Town " (1979), which s...

Aubrey Hamilton Reviews: Dead Angler by Victoria Houston

Dead Angler  by Victoria Houston (Berkley, 2000) is the first book in the Loon Lake mysteries. Set in Loon Lake, Wisconsin, a fictional town in northern Wisconsin, all of the books focus on fly-fishing and its complexities as much as they do on solving homicides. Eighteen titles have been released since the first one, the latest in June 2019. The narrator is Paul Osborne, a retired dentist who is a recovering alcoholic and who is coming out of mourning his wife who died about two years before the series opens. He decides to pick up his old hobby of fly-fishing but finds he needs some refresher training. Llewellyn Ferris is the town’s new chief of police and also an expert in fly-fishing. The owner of a local sports store links the two and they go out together on Prairie River and immediately find a body, apparently a drowning victim. Paul’s dental training becomes useful as they note suspicious injuries to the victim, who turns out to be a former patient of Paul’s, and Lew deputizes Paul to support the investigation.

Paul becomes very busy suddenly, as his neighbor and good friend Ray Pradt, a fishing guide and all-round character, needs him to help get ready for a major fishing tournament. The town resident enlisted to deliver the top-of-the-line fishing boats for the tournament has disappeared, and Ray is beside himself as the first day of the competition approaches.

Well-plotted with nicely sketched characters. Ray Pradt in particular is an original who stands out. Nothing cozy about these books: motives for crimes and those who commit them are generally of the worst kind, and alcoholism and its effects on families is a running theme. The idyllic setting of these stories is an integral part of each of them; the lakes with their native flora and fauna are ever-present, no matter what the forefront action is. The author’s respect and love for the area shines. Highly recommended series, helpful to start from the beginning but not necessary.

·         Mass Market Paperback: 272 pages

·         Publisher: Berkley; 1st edition (April 1, 2000)

·         Language: English

·         ISBN-10: 0425173550

·         ISBN-13: 978-0425173558

Aubrey Hamilton ©2019

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.

Beneath the Stains of Time: An Internal Affair: "Motive" (2000) by Hideo Yokoy...

Beneath the Stains of Time: An Internal Affair: "Motive" (2000) by Hideo Yokoy...: Hideo Yokoyama worked as an investigative reporter for J ō m ō Shimbun , a daily newspaper based in Gunma prefecture, but, in the late n...

Aubrey Hamilton Reviews: The Big Thaw by Donald Harstad

The Big Thaw by Donald Harstad (Doubleday, 2000) is the third in the Deputy Sheriff Carl Houseman series, six police procedurals set in rural Nation County, Iowa. It’s January with at least a foot of snow on the ground and the temperature has been below zero for so long everyone thinks their thermometers are broken. Carl is rousted out of bed to help chase a burglary suspect who slides off the icy road into a ditch. Once extracted from his wrecked car, the police recognize Fred Grothier who is known to be guilty of a range of minor crimes. Questioning reveals he and his cousins are the perpetrators of a string of recent break-ins, visiting the empty homes of residents who found a warmer place to spend the winter. Fred startles Carl and his colleagues when Fred tells them he was driving around looking for his cousins, who have disappeared. Fred dropped them off at a home whose owners were known to be out of town but the cousins were not there when he returned to pick them up with their loot.

Carl and a couple more from the sheriff’s office go to the house in question and search it from top to bottom. The frozen bodies of the cousins are found under a tarp in a tool shed, shot execution-style with Russian automatics. Russian weapons are not all that common in Nation County, where the U.S.-made shotgun and rifle are the usual guns of choice. The entire sheriff’s office is mulling over this strange turn of events when some of the state FBI agents show up. The simmering rivalry between the local boys and the FBI know-it-alls flares up, and a convoluted but fast-moving story unfolds.

Harstad was a deputy sheriff for more than 25 years and it shows in the precise and exhaustive description of crime scene investigations. Similar to the Jake Hines titles by Elizabeth Gunn and the Posadas County books by Steven Havill, this series balances the personal lives of the characters with authentic police work in a rural setting where there are never enough law enforcement personnel to go around. Highly recommended.

·         Hardcover: 368 pages

·         Publisher: Doubleday; 1st edition (August 15, 2000)

·         Language: English

·         ISBN-10: 0385495692

·         ISBN-13: 978-0385495691

Aubrey Hamilton © 2018

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal IT projects by day and reads mysteries at night.