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The seventh book in the Woods Cop series features game warden Grady Service opening two investigations at almost the same time. Grady has finally been able to find some time to go fishing with his best friend Lutitious Treebone when his dog, Newf, digs up some skeletal remains. As it turns out, they are more than eighty years old. What is puzzling is that there are remnants of gold dust on the bones, and there has never been a really significant gold find in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The second case involves what appears to be an eco-terrorist group that is using guerrilla tactics to advance its agenda. They’ve set up a series of barriers along the river, as well as traps that have killed one man and seriously injured one of the Department of Natural Resources deputies. There are a strange series of events that may or may not be related to the group, including a trap called a "wolf tree" which is something that has rarely been seen in the area. My main issue with the book had to do with the female characters. Although Grady is well into middle age, every female he meets seems determined to get him into bed. None of them take no for an answer and they all pursue him relentlessly. It’s hard to imagine that professional women would behave in the way depicted here; it’s highly inappropriate to engage in this kind of conduct with a co-worker and/or superior. This particular area of the narrative also led to some extremely annoying dialogue. One of the females, a brilliant researcher, talks in the third person. "Zhenya chooses her words most carefully—except during copulation. She understands what is expected…." The main love interest, Tuesday Friday, who is a police detective on loan for the investigation, constantly speaks in sexual double entendres. The book is action packed and exciting, but there were far too many threads to the narrative, which made it extremely difficult to follow. A strange settlement at a local lake, the traps, gold dust, the wolf tree, the origin of the skeletal remains, PLUS five homicides – it was hard to remember what was going on, much less tie it all together. Although Heywood may have been overly ambitious in the creation of the plot, the pacing was excellent and the core mystery set in the present day was well developed. There’s a lot to like here, but the reader has to work to get beyond the flaws. § Formerly a training development manager for a large company, Maddy is now retired in Frisco, TX, and continues to enable the addiction of crime fiction fans as owner of the online discussion group, 4 Mystery Addicts (4MA), while avidly reading in every possible free moment herself.
Reviewed by Maddy Van Hertbruggen, May 2010
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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