Hunter's Dance by
Kathleen Hills
pbk out November 06
(Poisoned Pen Press)
at £9.95
Bambi Morlen was an obnoxious young man, but he didn't deserve to die
the way he did – and he certainly didn't deserve the grotesque post-death
mutilation that his body suffered.
This mystery, set in the year 1950 in the Finnish community of St. Adele in
Michigan's Upper Peninsula, is ably detected by Constable John McIntyre,
hoisted out of retirement by the death of his predecessor. His heart isn't in the
job, he'd far rather be indulging in his retirement task of translating a
nineteenth century Swedish book, but he conscientiously brings his
intelligence and humane compassion to the job. It's as well that he does, as
his superior Sheriff Koski has the dim intellect which is the mainstay of so
many detective tales.
The victim was a member of the wealthy group of summer residents – and not
a popular one. The particular mutilation visited upon his body throws
suspicion upon an Indian boy with whom he was arguing shortly before his
death, but John McIntyre doesn't really buy this. The dead boy had been
involved in uranium prospecting – does this have any bearing on his murder?
What of his mother's odd behaviour? Anybody might be unhinged by the
death of a much-loved son, but her attitude towards the police is strangely
ambivalent.
This novel has more twists, turns and red herrings to the kilo than the victim
has had hot dinners, and certainly more people guilty of various crimes great
and small than most similar novels. This is Kathleen Hills' second book about John
McIntyre and his tight-knit community; her first, "Past Imperfect" was well
received and there is little doubt this one, too, will find admirers among
aficionados of this type of small-town setting.
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Hunter's Dance by
Kathleen Hills
