Murder She Wrote meets Fargo in the eighteenth installment of Victoria
Houston's "engaging" (Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine) and
critically acclaimed mystery series set in the northwoods of
Wisconsin."My wife and Gordon Maxwell tried to kill me this morning."
Doc Osborne is startled by the unexpected words tumbling out of the
mouth of his friend and fellow AA member Chuck Pelletier, the recently
remarried lead accountant for a planned luxury fly-fishing lodge
preserve under construction in the area. Alarmed, Doc tries to alert
Police Chief Lew Ferris, but she is tied up with law enforcement teams
across the state. They're searching for thieves who have been cutting
down and stealing hundreds of thousands of precious birch trees from
public and private property across northern Wisconsin. But it's too
late. Pelletier is found dead not two hours later. Doc is shocked,
saddened, and determined to get to the bottom of the murder. With one
man dead, evidence of lakeshore properties being stolen from elderly
owners, and an attempted sexual assault, short-handed Chief Ferris
deputizes Doc and his skilled tracker neighbor to help with the
investigation. Then, just as they seem to be getting somewhere, things
grow even more complicated. Just another summer in Loon Lake.