Mystery Series- Alex McKnight

Steve Hamilton

Steve Hamilton writes the award winning Alex McKnight series.

McKnight is a private investigator of sorts. He was a Detroit cop, but after his partner was killed, he moves to the UP of Michigan. After a short unsuccessful stint as an official PI, he manages to continue to attract serious trouble and solve mysteries.

Location: Eastern Upper Peninsula of Michigan, primarily between St. Ignace and Sault Ste. Marie including the Bay Mills Reservation.

Violence and language.

Recurring characters of note:
Alex McKnight, reluctant private investigator
Vinnie LeBlanc- a Chippewa Indian, his good friend
Leon Purdell- another friend and sometimes P.I.
Natalie- his girlfrind
Jeannie- his ex-wife

#1 A Cold Day in Paradise 1998
Alex has returned to the UP of Michigan to a string of cabins built by his now-deceased father. He's trying to fix up the cabins and rent them to fishermen, etc., while living in one of them himself. He is still fighting survivor guilt from the incident that ended his career as a Detroit policeman. His partner was killed and he survived when they were gunned down by a mentally unbalanced man. Alex had to take early retirement at 3/4 pay.

Edwin, a good friend, has an addiction to gambling. He keeps promising to go straight, but can't keep it up. Meanwhile, things are awkward because Mike had an affair with Edwin's wife.

When Edwin calls Alex in the middle of the night to report that he has found a man in a motel room with his throat slit, Alex goes there first, and then reports to the police. The police are not happy they weren't called first and Alex finds himself in constant trouble with the Sault Ste. Marie police chief.

Edwin seems to have a connection to yet another murder, and then he goes missing.

The perpetrator begins to target Alex, and the evidence points to this being the man who shot Alex and his partner in Detroit. Corrections insists that man is still in prison in Jackson.

This story has more than one plot twist, and it won the Edgar Award.

#2 Winter of the Wolf Moon 2000

#3 The Hunting Wind 2002

#4 North of Nowhere 2003

#5 Blood is the Sky 2004

#6 Ice Run 2005

#7 A Stolen Season 2006
Summer never seems to arrive in the UP that year. Natalie has returned to Detroit to take on an undercover assignment to capture a gun smuggling ring.

Alex and his friends rescue three men who are so drunk they crash their boat, an historic Chris-Craft, into some old pilings. As thanks for this, Alex and friends are hounded and continually beaten up. A locked box that went down with the boat is missing, and the boaters are sure Alex has it.

#8 Beneath the Book Tower: An Alex McKnight Short Story 2011

#9 Misery Bay 2011

#10 Die a Stranger 2012

#11 Let It Burn 2013

#12 Dead Man Running 2018
This will probably end up being one of the best books I've read this year.

A serial killer is apprehended in Arizona, and he says he will reveal the locations of previous victims, but he will only talk to one person. That person is Alex McKight. The FBI flies him out west.

Alex can't figure out any relationship between himself and Martin, the killer. Martin knows fact after fact about Alex. The FBI doesn't want to believe that Alex doesn't know him.

Martin engineers a mass murder and his own escape, and Alex must chase him across the country, finally discovering the connection between them. Then the "game" becomes personal.

The author credits several true crime books about serial killers as research material that I have also read. The whole book is chilling.

#13 Riddle Island (Short Story) 2020

Mike Bowditch Mystery/Thriller Series - by Paul Doiron

Paul Doiron

Paul Doiron, born c. 1965, writes several series of books, all set in Maine.

The Mike Bowditch series follows the career of Game Warden Mike Bowditch. The Joe Pickett series by C.J. Box is similar in that the protagonist in each is a state game warden, a seldom-used law enforcement career in police procedurals. Both wardens have a hard time following directives to stay out of criminal investigations, and I enjoy both series immensely. Being more familiar with the terrain and ecosystem of Maine, I find these perhaps more appealing, but the exotic (to me) setting of the Wyoming mountains also appeals. Both series are excellent. Joe Pickett is better at understanding himself and is generally more mature, while Mike Bowditch has no ability to curb his restless nature or understand why he keeps alienating his girlfriend.

Doiron has won numerous awards for his books. Some of the entries are short stories, and these are indicated in the list.

One of the recurring characters, Charley Stevens, a retired warden who takes Mike under is wing, is a quintessential Mainer. The audiobooks are voiced by Henry Leyva who captures Charley's thick Maine accent and timing to perfection.

There is a fair amount of strong language, some explicit sex, and the level of violence is what one should expect in this type of book.

Recurring characters of note:
Mike Bowditch, Maine game warden
Kathy Frost, his supervisor and friend
Charley Stevens, retired warden, pilot, friend of Mike
Ora Stevens, Charley's wife
Sarah Harris, Mike's girlfriend at the beginning of the series
Stacey Stevens, daughter of Charley and sometimes girlfriend to Mike
Dani Tate, fellow warden, eventually turned state trooper and sometimes girlfriend to Mike
Billy Cronk, friend of Mike

#1 The Poacher's Son 2010
A timber company has sold its vast holdings to another company. For decades, small inholdings on the many lakes have been leased to individuals and small businesses. Those arrangements are all about to end and many people face devastating business losses and/or must leave the homes they've known.

Mike's father Jack, is accused of killing a young policeman and the representative of the timber company. Although Jack doesn't seem to have a clear motive related to the ending of the leases, he's the best suspect.

Although Mike has been largely estranged from his father since he was nine years old, he's stayed in touch just enough that he does not believe his father to be guilty. Mike tries to dig out additional evidence and follow leads that would show Jack to be innocent.

He's living with a girlfriend, Sarah, who doesn't understand Mike's obsession with involving himself in every lead in the case, especially when he is repeatedly told to back off.

#2 Trespasser 2011
Mike is called to the scene of a car-deer accident, but when he arrives, both the woman and the deer are gone. There is only an abandoned car and blood in the road. He calls the state police to the scene, but the responding officer insists that Mike is overreacting, and the woman just was angry or scared and walked away.

Subsequent finds are reminiscent of a crime committed some years earlier for which a man named Erland Jefferts was convicted and is now in prison for. Mike can't let the questions go, even after he is warned off by his superiors- one of the key aspects of his personality.

In his personal life, Mike continues to try to keep his relationship with Sarah healthy, but he's really clueless as to how to do this.



#3 Bad Little Falls 2012
Because he consistently won't take orders, despite his good record at solving crimes, Bowditch is banished to a remote district "down east" in Maine. There he finds a serious drug problem tied to the economic disaster of the location.

Mike meets Lucas Sewell, who is about 12 years old, who is severely emotionally damaged. He fills notebooks with a stream-of-consciousness journal, keeps to himself, and tries to avoid contact with two young men who bully him. Although his mother's past is totally unstable, she is currently sober and holding down a job, and she fiercely protects Lucas. Mike finds himself drawn to her off-beat personality, despite the fact that her brother is probably engaged in criminal activities.

Mike is trying to settle in to the new area, tending to normal game warden duties. He's also trying to make friends. While having dinner at the home of a man who seems friendly, a knock on the door reveals a young man nearly frozen to death. Outside, the snowstorm has turned into a blizzard, but the frostbitten man insists that his friend is out there in the cold and injured. The group sets in motion an attempt to rescue the injured man.

The ensuing search in the dark, cold snowy night is fraught with questions of identity, suspected lies, and a final chase scene where Lucas is taken hostage.

Despite all the warnings Mike receives to stay away from the troubled Sewell family, he can't seem to help himself. After the hostage crises, Lucas runs away, and Mike believes he's the only one that has a chance to find the boy.

#4 Massacre Pond 2013
Elizabeth Morse is a woman with too much money. She is systematically buying up land in Maine in the hopes of transforming it into a new national refuge. She keeps tight security, and her entire property is fenced and patrolled. Her activities do not have the approval of the locals who see her plans as encroachment on their rights to hunt the area, generate jobs for income, and to own private property. She lives in a huge log mansion with her adult daughter Briar on the estate.

Mike is called to investigate the apparently sensely killing of six moose on her property. Everyone assumes this was done to get back at Morse for her goals. There is also the question of how the shooter got on the property. Mrs. Morse's personal assistant is a California hippy, Leif Woodwind. A friend of Mike's, Billy Cronk, is on the security team. Billy is pretty sure he's going to lose his job over the incident.

When Mike investigates, Morse reveals that she's received multiple death threats because of her land purchases.

Meanwhile, Mike keeps getting cryptic inspirational messages from his mother with no explanation. Then her husband Neil keeps leaving messages that Mike should call him. Mike accepted long ago that Neil has been great for his mother, but he's never gotten along well with his stepfather.

Mike also feels himself falling for Charley's daughter Stacey, but she's engaged to a young professional named Mark Skillen.

#5 The Bone Orchard 2014
After three years of being in constant trouble, Mike has resigned as a game warden. He's leading fishing expeditions and serving as a live-in caretaker at Betty Morse's lodge. Morse has moved back west.

An acquaintance of Mike, a young veteran of Afganistan, Jimmy Gammon, has returned home permanently disfigured and in constant pain. When his mother calls 911 to report that he has locked himself in the barn with a gun, Kathy Frost and Dani Tate respond to the call. Jimmy has apparently decided to commit suicide by cop, and Kathy is forced to shoot him.

However, the media and Jimmy's fellow vets spin the story as flat-out murder. Kathy is targeted as an enemy. Mike returns to the area to see how he can help his friend and former boss. After all, Kathy is the one who has always gone to bat for him.

Mike would like to get better acquainted with Stacey Stevens, but she's not interested.

#6 "The Bear Trap"- short story 2014

#7 The Precipice 2015
Two female hikers on the Appalachian Trail go missing. As the search for them continues, it becomes increasingly likely that their disappearance is the result of foul play rather than an accident or them becoming lost.

The story is logical and cleverly points the finger ofsuspicion at numerous people. However, I don't care for crime stories that take place on major hiking trails because people are already frightened to go to the woods without adding stories like this to the mix.

#8 Widowmaker 2016

#9 Knife Creek 2017
Feral boars have strayed from New Hampshire into Maine, and Mike must go shoot them. He's currently living with Stacey, and she skips work so they can go together. They do find the hogs, but they also find the skeletonized body of an infant wrapped in a pink t-shirt.

Mike goes to the nearest house, a rental property, to ask questions, but the two women he meets there are very strange. Mike is sure the younger one is a college co-ed who went missing nearly four years prior and has been presumed dead, murdered.

The policeman who pursued that investigation is closing in on arresting the man he thinks killed her, and when the four years have passed, he can legally arrest his suspect. He is obsessed with the case, and is not happy that Mike is so sure the missing girl is alive.

When Mike and Dani (now a state trooper) go back to the house to follow up, very bad things happen.

Stacey misses so much work that she manages to get herself fired, which is tough to do from a government job. Mike gets promoted to Warden Investigator. He's not about to leave Maine, which is exactly what Stacey wants to do. He finds himself becoming attracted to Dani.

#10 Stay Hidden 2018
Mike has just been promoted to be a Warden Investigator. He is called to the scene of a hunting incident on an island 20 miles off the coast. The community is insular with generations-long feuds between various families. They do not welcome outsiders.

The "incident" involves the shooting of a visitor to the island who was hanging laundry. Apparently a pair of white underwear was mistaken for a deer tail, and the woman is killed. Then the woman's sister arrives on the island.

Mike and several other law enforcement persons investigate. However, all except Mike go back to the mainland with plans to return the next day. However, dense fog rolls in and Bowditch must try to solve the murder on his own.

The plot is very complicated, but the characterization of the locals is especially good. There is also a lesson about the importation of deer to an island that can't support its population.

#11 "Rabid" - short story 2018
This is a story told to Mike by his friend Charley. Mike is in the truck with Charley while the older man delivers a package to a house at the very end of a remote dirt road.

When Charley was young, he was called to the home of a veteran who has a Vietnamese wife. The man has been bitten by a bat. However, he's obsessively controlling and has a fit that Jang has called someone about the bat. As time goes on, Jang tries to research what rabies might do to a person to change them before they died. Ora Stevens learns about this since she volunteers at the local library. When the situation comes to a head, things may not be as they seem.

An excellent short story.

#112 Almost Midnight 2019

#13 "Backtrack" - short story 2019

#14 One Last Lie 2020
Mike has gone to Florida to check a personal reference for a man the Wildlfe Service may hire. All his recommendations were good, but Mike finds it odd that one person is missing from that list. He learns that his suspicions were well-founded. While there, he spends a day with Stacy trying to catch the invasive Burmese Pythons.

He returns to Maine and his friend Charley has gone missing, leaving a cryptic note that Mike finds, but telling Ora nothing. The rest of the book is the tale of Mike hunting for Charley and trying to determine what demons from the past have caused Charley to disappear to try to right an old wrong.

Mike's girlfriend Dani ends up in the hospital with encephalitis, and at the end of the book Stacy decides to move back to Maine. Mike is totally conflicted over which woman means the most to him.

This isn't one of my favorite books in the series. It's really complicated which isn't really the problem, but the reader can never really figure out what's going on and Charley has to do a classic info dump at the end to explain it all.

#15 "The Impostor" - short story 2020
In this short story, a car goes into a lake and the driver drowns. When he is recovered, his ID says that he is Mike Bowditch! But Mike is there, and of course, the man is an impostor. In fact, he's been stopping people using Mike's identity and even broke into a house claiming to be Bowditch. But how did he end up driving into a lake?

#16 Dead by Dawn 2021
This book is a litte different in style from the others. The entire book takes place in one day. The chapters alternate between the daytime hours and the hours of the night that follows it.

Mike agrees to re-inverview a woman of privilege whose husband had drowned. She does not believe it was an accident although there is no evidence that suggests otherwise. However, she believes that he never would have taken off his life vest voluntarily because of his fear of drowning.

The interview leads him to talk to a number of other people, and the encounters become stranger and stranger.

The nighttime half of the chapters begin with spikes being placed in the icy road as he descends a steep hill. They blow all his tires and the truck plunges into the river. The wolf-dog Shadow is with him. These chapters are his desperate attempt to save his own life.

#17 "The Caretaker" - short story 2021
Mike and Charley are visiting on Charley's porch when a car comes in the driveway. This is unusual, because Charley's place is well off the beaten track. A crippled man and his younger, beautiful wife explain that they are having serious problems with a man they hired to be caretaker at their cottage located on another remote lake in the area. The caretaker has committed several acts of what would probably be called malicious mischief, and although no one has been hurt, they are concerned and were told Charley might be willing to help them.

Charley and Mike smell a rat, but they go to investigate anyway.

#18 Hatchet Island 2022 Mike and Stacey are called to Baker island off the coast of Maine to visit a seabird research project that has been going on for many years. Stacey had been one of the researchers, and her old friend and college roommate Kendra is still there. Kendra reports that their director Maeve McLeary has gone missing, and harassment from lobstermen and some of the locals from the adjacent Ayers Island is increasing. Kendra is worried.

The couple meet the other two researchers, Hillary and Garrett, and they experience some of the harrasment first hand. They go to a small separate island to camp for the night, and when they arrive back at Baker the next day, Kendra and Hillary are dead and Garrett is Missing.

The denoument takes place on yet another island, Hatchet Island.

This book was a little hard for me to follow with a lot of twists and turns and suspects with motives that didn't seem quite robust enough to me.

#4 "Skin and Bones" - short story 2022
This is long enough it is almost a novella, but still not a full-length novel.

Again, Charley tells a tale from when he was a young ranger. This memory is triggered by seeing a dead eagle that Mike has in his truck which someone shot.

Charley's story starts with a dead eagle, but is centered on two brothers. The older one is guardian for the younger, a young man who is "skin and bones," and is terrified of his older brother and the man's dog.

#19 Dead Man’s Wake 2023
Mike and Stacey are enjoying their engagement part at his stepfather Neil's cottage. Neil's new wife Jubilee is about Mike's age and he's struggling a bit with that truth. Charley and Ora have also been invited. The cottage is on Great Pond, Maine (the inspiration for On Golden Pond. The lake is large and they all comment on the jet skis and boats that are going too fast in the dwindling evening light.

Although Mike is not on duty here, and Charley, of course, is retired, as law enforcement, they can't resist going out on the dock to observe the miscreants. Then one of the boats hits something, noses around as if searching the area, then speeds off. After calling 911, Mike and Charley head out to see what happened. They find a severed man's arm.

There is a young constable working the lake who is both incompetent and overeager to prove that he is competent. He butts heads with Mike more than once.

The body of the man is found, which leads to another unhappy discovery.

#20 "Snakebit" - short story 2023

#21 Pitch Dark 2024

#22 Skin and Bones and Other Mike Bowditch Short Stories - a compilation of the short stories 2025

#23Storm Tide, Minotaur Books, 2026

Dirk Pitt Thriller Series - Clive Cussler/ Dirk Cussler

Clive and Dirk Cussler

Clive Cussler, 1931-2020, was not only a novelist, but a real-life undersea explorer. He received numerous awards not only for writing, but for his maritime exploits.

Although the books tend to be highly on the fantastic side, often with alternative history, and almost techo-thrillers, you can be relatively sure the marine science is all based in fact.

The Dirk Pitt novels have a central theme of being underwater thrillers, usually revolving around recovery of some treasure or shipwreck. The series was begun by Clive Cussler who also founded the actual agency called the National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA) that appears in the books. Several books were co-authored with his son Dirk, who continued the series after his father's death in 2020.

They almost always begin with some real or possible episode in history that then ties in to the present-day plot. And they almost always include a "cameo" appearance of Clive Cussler himself in some small character role.

The books include a fair amount of hardcore fighting, and the plots are usually tied to deep sea explorations or recovery operations.

Recurring characters:
Dirk Pitt
Dirk Pitt, Junior- Dirk's son
Summer Pitt- Dirk's daughter
Hiram Yaeger, tech guru
Al Giordino, underwater technology director
Rudi Gunn, NUMA assistant director
James Sendecker, Admiral US Navy, then US Vice President

#1 The Mediterranean Caper 1973

#2 Iceberg 1975

#3 Raise the Titanic! 1976

#4 Vixen 03 1978

#5 Night Probe 1981

#6 Pacific Vortex! 1983

#7 Deep Six 1984

#8 Cyclops 1986

#9 Treasure 1988

#10 Dragon 1990

#11 Sahara 1992

#12 Inca Gold 1994

#13 Shock Wave 1996
This volume is overly long and the science seems totally suspect, even for a fictional thriller. But there is no end to the thrills.

The book begins with a totally fictional story of a ship transporting convicts from Britain to Austrailia in the 1700s. It founders in a storm and the captain along with a handfull of crew and passengers survives and establishes residence on a small volcanic island. Eventually the captain and ship's carpenter are rescued and taken back to civilization, but the others choose to stay on the island and establish a small population, headed by Highwayman Dorsett and thief Betsy Fletcher. Near the end of the Captain's life, these settlers send him their children to be educated in England. They also send uncut diamonds to pay for that education.

The main story takes up 4 generations later with the most prominent of the Dorsett descendents running his own diamond cartel. He has returned to Gladiator Island (named for the original ship) and is mining the two "pipes," one in each volcano, for the diamonds. He is ruthless and greedy. His three daughters are all Amazons. The youngest gave birth to twin sons out of wedlock, and she alone opposes her father. The father has kidnapped the boys and is using them to manipulate Maeve to do his bidding.

Meanwhile, an unexplained plague has wiped out a whole colony of penguins and also killed most of the people aboard a cruise vessel. Apparently by chance, Maeve who is one of the tour guides, survives. On a nearby ship, oddly enough, one of her older sisters has also survived.

Pitt and NUMA are sent to investigate the event. Pitt and Maeve are attracted to each other.

The "plague" turns out to be engineered by papa Dorsett for reasons of personal gain, and NUMA is determined to save the next target, the city of Honululu.

#14 Flood Tide 1997
This novel is complex, with three major plots going on at the same time. It begins with the sinking of a ship in 1948 that was covertly filled with Chinese treasures that were beging stolen and taken to Formosa (now Taiwan), the Republic of China.

The primary villain is a Chinese businessman named Qin Shang who is the key player in the three plots.

He is involved in the smuggling of thousands of illegal Chinese immigrants into to the USA as part of a larger Chinese plot to take over the US. However, Qin Shang is in it mostly for the money, although he is also completely committed to Chinese world domination.

Dirk Pitt stumbles onto one of Qin Shang's human trafficking operations while he is supposed to be recouperating from the events of Shock Wave. He is aided in his efforts to foil Qin Shang by a gutsy Chinese-American woman who is working undercover for the INS.

The third plot involves another of Qin Shang's enterprises-- an attempt to divert the Mississippi River to a new port under Chinese control.

The fact that it took the high-stakes players in the book so long to figure out that this was Qin Shang's target is a bit unbelievable.

Near the end, the mystery of the sunken vessel with the Chinese treasures is resolved in a surprising way.

#15 Atlantis Found 1999
This begins with many things that I really love in a good thriller- an asteroid strike in Hudson Bay at the end of the last ice age (actually an hypothesis that won't die), an ancient chamber discovered in a mine cave-in, an unknown alphabet.

The story just gets more crazy from there. Don't look for reality, just go with the flow. The Fourth Destiny has been working for decades to take over the world by causing another catastrophe similar to the one that occurred after the pre-historic asteroid strike. Of course Dirk Pitt and Al Giordino are in the middle of the action.

I'll admit to being disappointed that even though there is a graphic with the unknown alphabet, the story doesn't go into any detail about decoding it. The premise is that whatever Atlantis was, it certainly wasn't called that at the time. The book posits that it was a connected series of port cities that traversed the entire globe until the tidal waves caused by the asteroid wiped it out.

As is true in several of the books, they meet "Dad," who is Clive Cussler.

#16 Valhalla Rising 2001

#17 Trojan Odyssey 2003

#18 Black Wind 2004 (with Dirk Cussler)
Black Wind begins with a Japanese submarine being sent to the west coast of the US near the end of World War ii with a payload of biological warfare "bombs," but the sub is sunk without ever delivering the deadly cargo.

Two men stationed at a remote Coast Guard station in Alaska, and their dog, die from cyanide poisoning, and apparently connected to that episode, a reasearch team downwind is exposed to smallpox. When NUMA goes to explore the possible location of the source of these airborne threats, their helicopter is shot down by a Asians on a fishing trawler.

These events and other odd incidents appear to be linked to the Japanese Red Army, a militant group that had be thought long defunct.

However, it turns out that someone else is attempting to recover the lost biological weapons while diverting the blame to Japan. The action goes on and on for 600 pages.

#19 Treasure of Khan 2006 (with Dirk Cussler)

#20 Arctic Drift 2008 (with Dirk Cussler)

#21 Crescent Dawn 2010 (with Dirk Cussler)
This plot is quite believeable. The story begins with a Roman ship being overtaken by pirates in about AD 300. This occurs in the Bosporus Strait. Then there is a second historical scene with a British ship being sunk by persons unknown (although some hints are given) in the English Channel in the early 20th Century.

Dirk and NUMA stumble on the remains of the Roman ship, but run afowl of the Turkish government for disturbing the site. As it turns out, a family of Turkish terrorists is the real problem. As brother and sister are determined to restore their family by any means to the ruling class which they believe is their birthright.

The artifacts that NUMA brought up from the ship are stolen by the terrorists, although it's unclear what actual value they have, even on the black market. However, Al is convinced that a statue they saw, but did not recover is connected to Emperor Constantine.

Meanwhile, connections between the British ship and the artifacts from the Roman ship begin to come to light.

The action is non-stop as usual, and all the plot threads get pulled together in the end.

#22 Poseidon's Arrow 2012 (with Dirk Cussler)

#23 Havana Storm 2014 (with Dirk Cussler)

#24 Odessa Sea 2016 (with Dirk Cussler)

#25 Celtic Empire 2019 (with Dirk Cussler)

#26 Clive Cussler's The Devil's Sea 2021 (by Dirk Cussler)

#27 Clive Cussler's The Corsican Shadow 2023 (by Dirk Cussler)
The story begins during WWII in 1940 when a man appears on the dock at LeHavre, France. HE tries to get aboard a channel ferry for England. When he is denied passage, in desperation he attempts to at least have his suitcases taken. Meanwhile, a German air strike creates chaos.

Jump ahead to the present. Someone is apparently saboutaging metropolitan water supplies. Dirk Pitt is part of an operation to explore and salvage the wreck of a channel ferry. An international businessman is attempting to scrape together enough money to avoid total ruin at the hands of the mafia.

Fairly worthless industrial diamonds are found aboard the wreck that Dirk explored. But the more they look into what should have been on that ferry, the more complicated things become.

And a young female French research scientist who is helping Dirk is have a love affair with a very shady character.

Joe Pickett Mystery/Thriller Series - C.J. Box

C.J. Box

The primary character in this series is Joe Pickett, Wyoming Game Warden for Twelve Sleep County who lives in the small city of Saddlestring.

This is one of my favorite series of thrillers. It's quite violent, but this is nicely balanced by Joe Pickett's reputation as being a "Dudley-Do-Right." Joe is a family man who seeks to make good decisions. His wife Marybeth, and daughters are main characters in the books.

Joe's best friend is an off-beat ex-Special Forces loner named Nate Romanowski. Nate is a falconer who seems to have a special relationship with nature and his birds. Only one of the books really veers into the paranormal, but it hovers around the edges of Nate's personality.

C.J. Box states that he started the series because he wanted to write Wyoming-based stories that genuinely portrayed the attitudes of people in that state.

The series begins with Joe as a rookie warden. He and the characters age and evolve. His children grow up, and his ever-the-nemesis mother-in-law becomes more and more outrageous in her quest for power and money.

I recommend the audio books, read by David Chandler. He is one of the best readers I've come across, and once you get his voicing for the characters in your head, you'll forever hear them when you read the books.

Recurring Characters:
Joe Pickett- Wyoming Game Warden
Marybeth- his wife
Sheridan, April, Lucy- his daughters
Missy- his mother-in-law
Nate Romanowski- master falconer
many other characters appear in several books

#1 Open Season 2001
The first book in the series won more awards than any other first novel, starting with a New York Times notable book award.

Joe has just come to Saddlestring, a rookie warden with a wife and two daughters, and another baby is on the way. They live in small, old state-provided housing, and Marybeth's mother Missy has little use for Joe, believing her daughter could have done much better.

The book begins with Joe trying to ticket Ote Keeley for poaching, and Ote grabbing Joe's gun from him, an embarrassment he will never live down, along with once having ticketed the governor of the state for fishing without a license. A few pages later, that same man turns up at Joe's house one night with a cooler full of animal scat from an unknown creature, and badly injured. Ote dies before Joe finds him sprawled on the woodpile.

When Joe, the warden from the next county, and a deputy from the sheriff's department go to check out Ote's outfitter camp high in the mountains. What they find only raises more questions.

#2 Savage Run 2002
The book begins with an ecoterrorist, Stewie Woods, and his new wife being blown up by an exploding cow. It turns out to be as gruesome as it sounds, but not as ridiculous.

Two hit men have been hired to track down radical eco-terrorists and kill them.

When someone posing as the dead Stewie calls Joe's wife, Joe is both jealous and concerned. Meanwhile, he's discovered that a man with a lot of political clout has poached a massive elk just for the trophy value. True to his character, Joe is outraged and is determined to bring the man to account.

Savage Run is a sheer chasm through a geological split in the Bighorn Mountains. Legend has it that the Cheyenne once fled from enemies across Savage Run by means of a secret route down and up the steep cliffs. Joe must find a way across or perhaps be killed.

In book time, Sheridan is two years older and much more savvy in the ways of the adult world.

#3 Winterkill 2003
This book has several different plots going on which all weave together. Perhaps the primary theme is tension between government and local citizens.

Winterkill opens with Joe observing a man who has apparently gone nuts and is randomly shooting down a herd of elk. When Joe reaches the spot he is stunned to learn that it's Lamar Gardiner, a Forest Service bureaucrat whom he knows. Joe arrests him, but Lamar manages to escape. Joe chases him down as a winter storm begins to unfold only to discover that someone else has brutally murdered him in the few minutes he was out of sight.

When another government employee is killed, investigators from federal agencies show up to find out what's going on, but their ability to interact with local residents is terrible at best, inflammatory at worst.

Meanwhile, a group of outcast transients arrives in town calling themselves the Sovereign Nation, and setting up camp in the National Forest. Among this group is the biological mother of April, Joe and Marybeth's middle daughter. The problem is that their efforts to adopt April have been stuck in the legal system for all the years she's lived with them. April's mother appears with an order from a judge to have April returned to her.

The book culminates in a standoff between the Sovereign Nation and the federals with the backing of the local sheriff.

Sheridan is now eleven and in fifth grade. Missy, Marybeth's mother, is there visiting once again and is up to what will become her modus operendi- to shed a husband she no longer has use for and find a new one with more money and more power. Lucy, much more interested in fashion and trends than Sheridan, finds Missy delightful.

Nate Romanowski is introduced and is suspected of the murders mostly because of his military history and his desire to live off the grid.

#4 Trophy Hunt 2004
This is my least favorite book in the series. It relies heavily on paranormal overtones in the plot which are not something I'm crazy about. There is an infodump at the end when the guilty party confesses. Sometimes you just have to do it that way, but again, not my fav. A young Goth woman sends Joe a pornographic email. It does make sense in the plot, but this trifecta just doesn't appeal to me. Several pieces of physical evidence are never explained. That said, the backbone of the plot is based on a real event that occurred in Montana.

A dead moose is found horribly mutilated. Then some cattle suffer the same fate. The mutilations are not done by wild animals. The cuts are clean and surgical.

Meanwhile, a rogue grizzly bear whose radio collar is malfunctioning, so it can't be tracked properly, turns up in Joe's territory.

Sheridan has portentious dreams and Nate claims he is communicating with the bear and knows there is some higher plot taking place.

Then two humans are found dead with the same kinds of mutilations.



#5 Out of Range 2005
This is one of my favorite in the series.

Following the marriage of Missy (Marybeth's mother) to rancher Bud Longbrake, Joe is sent to the Jackson Hole District to fill in after Game Warden Will Jensen has committed suicide.

But things there are weird. Warden Will had been acting very strange. He thought he was going crazy. But he would not approve the building of a high-end development that was going to cut off an elk migration route.

Joe has an early run-in with an animal advocate group, and then meets the developers who are now pressuring him to approve their plan. At the same time, he's trying to make sense of Will's actions. Then he begins to feel very odd himself.

The wife of the developer seems to be too interested in Joe, and he admits he's attracted.

Back in Saddlestring, a now teenage Sheridan is sparring with Marybeth. Marybeth, feeling uneasy about anonymous calls, asks Nate Romanowski to drop by more often, and Sheridan is uncomfortable with this.

Between bad signals, timing, and a destroyed phone, Joe and Marybeth are having very limited luck at staying in touch.



#6 In Plain Sight 2006
The brother of Ote Keely (see Open Season) is released from prison, and he blames Joe for Ote's death and also for what happened to Ote's wife and April while they were staying with the Sovereign Nation (see Winterkill). John Wayne Keely is out for revenge, but he takes the name of Bill Monroe and gets hired by one of the feuding Scarlett brothers.

The Thunderhead Ranch, belonging to the Scarlett family, is ruled with the iron hand of Opal. But when Opal disappears, her sons Hank and Arlen start battling for control.

Where is Opal? Who will take over the ranch? Sheridan, now fourteen, is best friends with Hank's daughter Julie, and she is caught up in the drama.

Everything comes to a head in a downpour of a storm that causes the Twelve Sleep River to jump its banks and bring normal transportation and communication to a halt.

Missy (now) Longbrake is still belittling Joe for his inability to protect his family from harassment. His boss is micromanaging him, and finally fires him.

#7 Free Fire 2007
After being fired, Joe works as ranch foreman for several months for his new father-in-law. His family has all moved out to the ranch and Missy is delighted they are under her control.

Then Governor Spencer Roulon, a loud and brash, but well-loved character, asks Joe to come back to the agency, but as a special employee of his. And for starters, he wants Joe to investigate the slaughter of four people in Yellowstone National Park. The shooter has taken advantage of a loophole in the law that allows him to go scott free because the small section of the park where the incident takes place does not technically have any way to prosecute him.

The plot gets more and more bizarre. Joe meets an expert on geothermal features who is convinced the volcaon under Yellowstone is about to erupt. He also is forced to come face to face with his own family's past. His youunger brother committed suicide long ago at Yellowstone.

Nate shows up to provide backup for Joe as they close in on the reason for the murders.

#8 Blood Trail 2008
Someone is hunting hunters. It takes three murders before anyone begins to suspect a pattern/serial killer, and Governor Spencer Roulon calls on Joe to look into it. He also hires a world-renowned tracker to help locate the perpetrator. Joe uses his leverage to get Nate released from Federal prison where he's been for a year.

Joe's supervisor Randy Pope, who really has no use for Joe, inserts himself into the investigation, and Joe has to wonder why.

A famous environmental spokesman appears in Saddlestring, and quickly becomes the prime suspect as he is primarily against hunting. The situation quickly gets out of hand and the deaths pile up.

Nate immediately disappers even though he's supposed to be in Joe's custody. Joe knows he's gone back to Alicia Whiteplulme, the Shoshone woman he loves. But the environmentalist and his Shoshone wife are with them, causing Joe to ask himself many questions.

#9 Below Zero 2009
Someone starts texting Sheridan claiming to be her long-thought-dead foster sister April. While skeptical at first, eventually, they all believe it is April and that she is in deadly danger. She's been abducted by two men- one a dying gangster and the other his envioronmental actvist son Robert who sells carbon credits to help people reduce their carbon footprint "below zero."

Robert is more dangerous than the gangster. He took the girl who had been sold to a brothel by her gambling foster father. She admires and trusts him. But it becomes clear that he can be quite ruthless when it comes to exacting revenge on those who have betrayed him.

When the FBI learns the name of the gangster April is with, they become highly interested.

This story has one basic plot instead of several, but the chase to find April and catch Robert and his father is not without surprises.

#10 Nowhere to Run 2010
Joe is on a routine patrol to check hunters when he finds an oddly dressed man fishing in a remote location. The man has too many fish, and when Joe prompts him for his license, the man can't produce it. He says it must be back in camp, so Joe accompanies him and discovers that the man is one of a set of twins, and something seems really off about them.

Joe soon finds out that they have no intention of letting him off the mountain.

This is a chilling tale of people who are attempting to live out of reach of the "government."

#11 Cold Wind 2011

Joe's mother-in-law Missy, has upgraded her marriage to Earl Alden who now owns all of his property, Thunderbird Ranch (from In Plain Sight) and that of her previous husband, Bud Longbrake whose land she got from him due to a pre-nuptual agreement that he failed to read carefully.

Earl has invested in the up-and-coming wind technology. He is rich and satisfied.

But Earl is brutally murdered and his body is found under very strange circumstances. Missy is immediately charge with the murder because the weapon was found in her car.

Joe is totally conflicted about helping her. Despite how little he likes her, she is Marybeth's mother, after all. He also finds it hard to believe that as greedy and conniving as she is that she would actually shoot someone in a face-off. But most of all, Joe wants to find the truth.

She calls in the powerful lawyer, Marcus Hand, to defend her.

#12 Force of Nature 2012
Joe Pickett's friend, Nate Romanowski, has a past in Special Forces, but he ran afoul of most authority figures long ago. He lives off the grid both literally and emotionally. His former commander is out to eliminate all those who know anything about a high-level crime. He figures he can draw Nate out of hiding by targeting his friend Joe Pickett and Pickett's family.

This one reads more like a military thriller than a story about a game warden, but it's really good.

#13 Breaking Point 2013
This story really resonates with me because it is based on one true story of the EPA overreaching to disallow a property owner to build on his lot for reasons of wetlands protection. When I was studying wetlands science, I learned a lot of reasons why these areas should be protected, but also of too many cases where regulations reached the ridiculous stage.

Two armed EPA employees show up in a new subdivision to tell Butch Roberson to stop moving dirt on his land. Not only that, he has to restore it to the condition it was the day before or he will be fined thousands of dollars a day.

The EPA men are shot dead and Butch goes on the run.

Marybeth is trying to partner with a local realtor to restore an historic building in town, but they are totally stymied by EPA regulations concerting asbestos and paint in the old building.

The regional supervisor for the EPA is out of control, but he may not be exactly who he claims.

Lots of gunfire and blowing things up.

#14 Stone Cold 2014
Nate and Joe have equal time in this book. Nate is still on the run from the federal government, and he has been hired by a wealthy man, Templeton, who hires killers to eliminate really bad people. This is similar to what Nate used to do when he was in Special Forces, and in his mind is totally justifiable.

Joe is sent by Governor Rulon to look into what's really going on in the county where Templeton lives. He devises a reason to visit the game warden in that area and stumbles into a situation where the entire county is under the control of Templeton.

Nate has been living off the grid in a line shack, and he meeets Olivia Brannon who works for Templeton. They are perfect for each other.

A third story line has Sheridan, who is now in college, getting really bad vibes about a fellow student who is obsessed with guns- more so than even the Wyoming culture allows. And the boy is odd. He seems to be building up to some sort of bad action.

Mother-in-law Missy is still up to her old tricks.

#15 Endangered 2015
Joe and Marybeth's adopted daughter April runs off with cowboy rodeo hero Dallas Cates. A few months later, April is found in a ditch, near death. She was beaten and dumped. Cates says he didn't do it, but April is in an induced coma and can't tell her story.

This book introduces the entire Cates family who are violent and act crazy. Dallas is the only mostly normal one in the bunch.

When Nate shows up in town to help Joe, he is ambushed, shot, and ends up in the same hosptial as April.

Meanwhile, the Cates clan: Brenda and Eldon, with sons Bull, Timber and Dallas are out to prove to the world that they should not be treated as white trash.

Non-stop action and some unique plot segments.

#16 Off the Grid 2016
This book is mostly about Nate, with Joe showing up at the end to help him.

Nate is living off-grid-- even farther off than usual because he's still wanted by the feds. However, two of them find him and offer to clear his record if he will do one mission for them. He is sent to the Red Desert to find out what's going on at a secret compound.

Meanwhile, Sheridan is cajoled into going on a weekend camping trip by one of her college roommates. No one is quite sure what the purpose of the trip is.

And Joe is sent by Governor Rulon to check on a game warden from a different district.

The three stories converge for an ending that is pure terrorist genre.

#17 Vicious Circle 2017
The Cates family is back. Although they did not all survive Endangered, the ones who did solidly blame Joe Pickett for everything that happened to them and they are out for revenge.

Dallas Cates has just been released from prison and he appears to immediately head back into a life of crime. He manages to escape prosecution for a murder and now he can't be tried for it again although everyone is certain he was guilty.

Nate was cleared of his federal charges, and he's trying to live a civilized life with Olivia. They are operating a "bird abatement business," using falcons to rid areas of nuisance birds. But he's still wild enough to come to Joe's aid when needed.

#18 The Disappeared 2018
Sheridan Pickett is working as a wrangler at a high-end guest ranch. One of the guests failed to return home to England after her summer stay. Her car was never found, and she left behind a business. Foul play is suspected.

The new governor, Colter Allen, wants Joe to look into it. He seems to be asking Joe to be his "range rider" as Joe did for Governor Rulon, but Allen is much more politically motivated, and Joe is not very enthusiastic.

Meanwhile, someone is bribing the night operator of a sawmill furnace that burns waste sawdust. The pickup comes in the early morning hours and throws things in the furnace to be burned with no trace due to the intense heat.

The employees of the guest ranch are cleared from suspicion. Joe asks for help from his friend Nate. Nate does come, but he's spinning a consipracy theory involving the local wind farm that Joe doesn't want to hear.

The governor fires Joe when Joe actually gets close to solving the mystery. Nate was at least partly right, Joe was sent on this mission to fail. But Joe figures it will take at least three days for the paperwork to come through so he keeps pressing toward the solution.

The book ends in a cliffhanger with Joe no longer having a job.

#19 Wolf Pack 2019
This is without a doubt the most violent of all the books in this series. The Wolf Pack is a gang of thugs from the Sinaloa drug cartel and they are coming back to Twelve Sleep County to kill a man who is in the witness protection program.

Meanwhile, Katleyn the game warden in the neighboring county asks for Joe's help to track down the pilot of a drone that is running wildlife to death. Katleyn and Joe keep bumpong up against dead ends when they can't find out any information about the owner.

Nate has settled into civilized life and is running a nuisance bird abatement business with the help of his love, Liz Brannon.

The brutal deaths keep piling up as the gang fulfills its mission.

#20 Long Range 2020
Someone takes a long-distance sniper shot at Judge Hewlitt in his own home. At the last minute, the judge leans over and the bullet hits his wife, critically injuring her.

Joe is called back from helping to find a rogue bear in Jackson county that has killed an outfitter. The new sheriff is a politically motivated young man who is also fairly incompetent. But Joe and Nate begin to find clues that lead to the shooter.

Then the county prosecutor is targeted, but the shooter misses.

The sheriff receives a tip that Nate was the guilty party, and he throws Romanowski in jail. Nate handles this less well than ever since he's unable to be home to protect Liv and his new baby, Kestrel, from threats that have been made against him.

#21 Dark Sky 2021
Colter Allen, governor of Wyoming, requests (orders) that Joe guide a social media mogul on a hunting trip. Allen hopes that Steve2, the computer giant, will locate a data processing center in Wyoming out of gratitude. A local, Brock, is to serve as outfitter.

Joe is not happy to be placed in this political position of trying to guarantee that this man gets a trophy elk. His concerns quickly shift focus as it becomes clear that someone is trying to kill Steve2.

#22 Shadows Reel 2022
Joe is called out to take care of a dead moose in a swamp on someone's ranch. Turns out the rancher didn't go close enough to discover it was a human body, tortured and burned.

Meanwhile, Marybeth is concerned because someone left an unmarked package at the library. She happened to see the man sneaking to the door and leaving it after hours. This turns out to be an historical photo album with disturbing implications.

Nate and Geronimo Jones are off on their own expedition in search of Axel Solidad, the falcon thief.

#23 Storm Watch 2023
Joe is called out to euthanize a badly injured elk that survived a collision with a car. A winter storm is brewing. He does find the elk, but he also finds a somewhat mysterious building in the forest with large fans in the end. Shockingly, there is a person, deceased who was apparently forced into the fan until his skull was cut open.

Joe is forced to leave the body in order to get back to his truck before he can't seen anything in the snow. He notifies the sheriff. When the sheriff gets there, there is no longer a body.

Geronimo Jones visits Nate with a plan for how they can earn enough money to rebuild Nate's falcon stable, and things seem to be improving for Nate. But then he is approached by a man who wants him to join a rogue militia group.

The sheriff, as so many before, blames Joe for finding bodies and making more work for him. But the bodies just seem to keep appearing, and Joe is forced to find out what's going on to protect himself.

#24 Three-Inch Teeth 2024
The young man who has been courting Sheridan is attacked and killed by a grizzly bear. While the forensic team is collecting evidence, one of their own is mauled by the same bear.

A group of women show up who are advocating for the rights of what they believe to be this same bear. They say that she is justifyably seeking revenge for the killing of her cubs.

In a parallel plot, Dallas Cates is released from prison and assembles a team of people who are determined to take their own revenge against the people whom Dallas blames for his troubles, including Joe. The stories of the bear and Dallas' strategy for eliminating people become strangely intertwined.

Warning; the book ends on a very low note.

#25 Battle Mountain 2025
An old outfitter is scouting for elk herds prior to the season when he will guide hunting parties. He's training an assistant. They are ambushed and captured by a team of commandoes in camoflauge.

The new assistant turns out to be Governor Roulon's son-in-law, and Joe is called in on special duty to find out what has happened to the men.

The side story involves the continuing search by Nate and Geronimo Jones to exact revenge on Axel Soledad.

The culmination of the story is on Battle Mountain, a totally fictitious location, but it is provided with a plausible history for the name.

There is only one little paranormal episode between Nate and a falcon.

#26 The Crossroads (Putnam, February 2026)
This book is certainly at a crossroad of the series. It begins with Joe being ambushed at a junction of a public road with three private lanes. Which one was he about to visit? All three owners have reasons to be unhappy with Joe's decisions as a game warden. Joe is shot in the head, and spends most of the rest of the book in a coma.

His daughters set about to find out what happened to their dad. April has been working as a private investigator for the past year, and she brings knowledge of how to uncover important facts. Sheridan brings her usual grit, and Lucy is the people person who can coax information from locals.

Marybeth is involved via her research, although she's spending most of her time at the hospital, waiting by Joe's bedside.

Joe does regain consciousness, but we are left wondering if he will finally take a less active role in the rough-and-tumble world hes inhabited for 20 years, or if he'll be back full force, or if this is the finale of the series.

Bullish on Business Interview with Rose Odette

I was recently interviewed by Rose Odette of "Bullish on Business." We met at a vendor event, and she invited me to participate in her regular video program.



We enjoyed chatting about everything from hiking to writing to faith.

See 2019 Interview with me on Indie Reads TV

Mystery Series- Kay Scarpetta

Patricia Cornwell

The primary character in this series is Kay Scarpetta, Chief Medical Examiner for the Commonwealth of Virginia, based in Richmond. Forensic science and the evidence which can be uncovered by an autopsy are the forces driving the plots.

Kay's neice, Lucy, is a primary character. Through the series, she grows from a tween into a brilliant and dangerous woman. Her forte is computers, but she manages to get into all kinds of scrapes. Her mother, Dorothy, is forever jealous of Aunt Kay, because Lucy really prefers Kay. Dorothy is narcissistic and man crazy. She and Kay have numerous fights. Their mother usually takes Dorothy's side. This family tension drives many of the side plots.

Scarpetta's love life evolves throughout the series.

I like this series a lot for the solid forensics with the dysfunctional relationships as counterpoint. Lucy is a favorite supporting role.

Recurring Characters:
Kay Scarpetta, Chief Medical Examiner for Virginia
Lucy, her neice
Dorothy, her sister
Pete Marino, policeman
Benton Wesley, FBI Special Agent
Temple Gault, archenemy criminal, appears in several books

#1 Postmortem 1990

#2 Body of Evidence 1991

#3 All That Remains 1992

#4 Cruel and Unusual 1993
As this book begins, a death row inmate is about to be electrocuted. His sentence is not commuted, and the body comes to Scarpettas morgue. A minor accident involving some broken bottles of formalin distracts the autopsy assistant, and fingerprints of the dead man are not taken.

Then a fingerprint that matches the dead man's file turns up at a new murder scene. While trying to sort this out, they discover that all official records of the prints of this criminal have disappeared from the police files.

Lucy comes to visit her aunt and quickly demonstrates how easily someone who knew how could make changes in the database records. This is the first book where we see how adept Lucy is with computers.

When more murders occur with confusing evidence, the press begins a campaign to smear Scarpetta and make it look like she hasn't been doing her job.

#5 The Body Farm 1994
The Body Farm is a real place, correctly called the University of Tennessee's Forensic Anthropology Center. There research is done to determine how bodies decompose under various environmental conditions. It plays a key role in determining the location where a murder occurred in this book.

Scarpetta, Marino, and Wesley are called to North Carolina as a special task force to help solve the murder of a young girl in a small town. The crime seems to mirror several committed in Cruel and Unusual. The harder the trio hunts for clues the more perplexing the situation becomes.

Marino is a heart attack waiting to happen, and he becomes involved with the mother of the murdered girl. Kay and Benton discover they are attracted to each other, despite Benton's seemingly placid marriage.

Lucy gets her first job with the FBI, working on a program to track violent criminals. But soon it appears that Lucy has gone rogue and broken into the FBI's entire database to sell espionage secrets.

#6 From Potter's Field 1995

#7 Cause of Death 1996

#8 Unnatural Exposure 1997

#9 Point of Origin 1998

#10 Scarpetta's Winter Table 1998

#11 Black Notice 1999

#12 The Last Precinct 2000

#13 Blow Fly 2003

#14 Trace 2004

#15 Predator 2005

#16 Book of the Dead 2007

#17 Scarpetta 2008

#18 The Scarpetta Factor 2009

#19 Port Mortuary 2010

#20 Red Mist 2011

#21 The Bone Bed 2012

#22 Dust 2013

#23 Flesh and Blood 2014

#24 Depraved Heart 2015

#25 Chaos 2016

#26 Autopsy 2021

#27 Livid 2022

#28 Unnatural Death 2023

#28 Identity Unknown 2024

#30 Sharp Force 2025

Novels Featuring Twins

Sons of Fortune by Jeffrey Archer. Archer is masterful at writing stories that span multiple generations or at least long periods of time and exploring how the people change through the years. In Sons of Fortune, we have the classic twins separated at birth plot. A set of fraternal male twins and a single male birth happen at the same hospital around 1948. The single baby boy dies and a nurse switches the dead baby with one of the twins so each family can have at least one baby.

The boys grow up in different socio-economic strata although both go to private schools when they become teens. Their paths keep creeping closer and closer to each other, but will they every meet, and even then, will they learn the truth of their history.

Mystery Series- Temperance Brennan

Dr. Kathy Reichs

Kathy Reichs, PhD. is herself a forensic anthropologist, one of only 100 certified in the United States. Out of this career, she writes both non-fiction on the topic, and fiction. Her book series featuring Temperance Brennan inspired the television series Bones. Temperance is the forensic anthropologist for North Carolina who also travels to Quebec regularly as part of her job.

The Fox TV show does not follow the books very closely. "Bones" is possibly on the autism spectrum, which is not at all true of the character in the books.

The books are authentic police proceedurals. Some unnecessary language. Graphic descriptions of dead bodies, particularly the ones in bad enough condition to call in a forensic anthropologist. Overall, I give the series high marks. Temperence is professional but real. There is a small amount of personal interaction so that we understand who she is and that she has some flaws. There are a lot of dream sequences in the books. Sometimes the dreams help Tempe find a clue in a case, sometimes they are just bizarre. There is a little overuse of the trite "something nagging that the protagonist can't quite remember" plot motif.

Series location:
Primarily Charlotte, NC, and Montreal, Quebec. Brennan splits her time between these two locations as needed, and is occasionally called to other cities.

Recurring Characters:
Temperance Brennan, forensic anthropologist
Katy, her daughter
Harry (Harriet), her sister
Andrew Ryan, fellow detective and sometimes lover

#1 Déjà Dead 1997
Temperence Brennan works for the Laboratoire de Médecine Légale in Montreal. Utility workers uncover some bones which come to Brennan for analysis. They turn out to be human, and she tentatively connects them with other skeletons which were found with one hand cut off. But the police aren't seeing the connection.

Before long, another similar body is found, but there are also differences. A hidey-hole apartment of a sleazebag is discovered, but he escapes. A map on the wall leads Tempe to yet another skeleton.

Meanwhile, Tempe's friend Gabby fears she is being stalked, and Tempe also receives threats.

For a first novel in a series, this one is full-bodied.

#2 Death du Jour 1999
The book is split between Montreal and Charlotte, NC. In Montreal, a house fire leads to the discovery of six bodies, none of which seem to have much connection to each other. The house is owned by a man in Belgium and is rented to various people. Two of the victims are infant twin boys. Four of the victims did not die as a result of the fire, including the twins. Brennan is particularly moved by their deaths.

Oddly enough, a trail of telephone calls from the house where the fire occurred leads to another house in North Carolina which is occupied by a seemingly benign but secretive group. They don't quite rise to cult status, but they are strange. They deny all knowledge of the calls and of knowing any of the victims in Canada.

Then, one young woman with a baby of her own, reaches out to Tempe for help.

#3 Deadly Décisions 2000
Tempe is working in Montreal, and the Outlaw Motorcycle Clubs are escalating a gang war. A young girl is caught in the crossfire and killed. Tempe is livid about the loss of innocent life.

An informant leads the police to the old graves of two gang members in exchange for favors. At the same site, the skull and two leg bones of an other young girl are found. Tempe really wants to identify this girl, and she has a chance at it, despite the time since death because the girl had a shunt in her skull for hydrocephalus.

Her nephew Kit, Harry's son, comes to visit and he is enamored with the motorcycle culture. He makes friends with a reporter that Tempe really dislikes. Is the reporter up to no good, and is Kit more involved than having a casual interest?

#4 Fatal Voyage 2001

#5 Grave Secrets 2002
Brennan is on loan to Guatemala to do forensic examinations on a mass grave. The government carried out a genocidal program against the Mayans there from 1962 to 1992.

While she's busy recovering skeletons of people who are mostly from a single family line, she's requested to help with a police case where a leg bone with blue jeans have been found to be clogging the outlet from a large septic tank at a hotel. She spends a totally nasty day recovering most of the rest of the dismembered skeleton from the tank's sections.

Before she's even had a chance to examine it properly, a local official rudely removes the bones from her jurisdiction.

Four local teenage girls are missing, and she is supposed to figure out if the skeleton might be one of those without even having the bones any more, so she gets creative.

A journalist is stalking her, trying to get an interview about the genocide. Two of her co-workers are ambushed. There is pretty much non-stop action in this book.

My primary question is how could large chunks of a body have gotten caught in a septic tank without it being uncovered? When the tank is dug up with a backhoe to recover the pieces there is no suggestion that it was recently opened. I can't imagine a drain hole large enough to accommodate an unbroken skull. A storm drain, might work, but these don't go through a septic tank.

#6 Bare Bones 2003
Temperance is examining the sparse remains of a dead newborn baby that was burned in a wood stove. She's contemplating the personal repurcussions since she knows the baby's grandfather, when she is called to a site where there are a large number of bones buried in plastic bags. These turn out to be bear bones- of multiple bears. Almost all bear bones, except for some bird bones.

Then she has to go to the crash site of a small plane where the two occupants were badly burned. When she finally gets back to the bears... uh oh... there are some human hand bones too.

The quest to find out what the plane was doing when it crashed leads the investigation to an old house in the country with a privy full of more bones. Do any of the bones connect?

#7 Monday Mourning 2004

#8 Cross Bones 2005

#9 Break No Bones 2006

#10 Bones to Ashes 2007
Tempe is in her Montreal office and is working her usual busy schedule of examining old bones, skeletons, and damaged bodies, when she hears of a skull and its skeleton which are sitting in someone's office because they seem to be too old to trace. She requests they be sent to her.

They require extensive cleaning, but the more she examines them, the more she suspects they might belong to a childhood friend of hers who went missing at age 13. This seems a stretch of coincidence, but the possibility stirs up all the old memories and questions as to what happened to Evangeline. The friend was Acadian, and that is where these bones were found.

She convinces the police to open a cold case investigation which leads to child porn, trafficking, and unexpected answers about her friend.

#11 Devil Bones 2008

#12 206 Bones 2009

#13 Spider Bones also titled Mortal Remains 2010

#14 Flash and Bones 2011

#15 Bones are Forever 2012

#16 Bones of the Lost 2013

#17 Bones Never Lie 2014
Tempe's old nemisis Anique Pomerleau, the only one who ever got away, is back. Young girls are going missing and their bodies turn up a few days later, posed and not mutilated or sexually assaulted.

Tempe and Ryan check into a number of other cold cases that seem to fit the profile, and with the help of Tempe's mother doing volunteer computer research, begin to see a pattern forming. But Mama has cancer and is refusing treatment.

There is a huge plot twist in the middle.

And Ryan asks Tempe to marry him.

#18 Bones on Ice a novella 2015
A high society woman who has influence with all the right people wants Brennan to examine the body of her daughter Brighton who died three years previously while summitting Mount Everest. The death did not occur anywhere near Charlotte NC, but the family wants answers, although the questions are uncertain.

The body is badly battered, possibly having fallen at death and then from being transported down the mountain in a canvas sled.

None of the other people in the climbing party have any answers. They all reached the base camp and Brighton did not.

Brennan begins studying the body and discovers a number of curious facts.

#19 Speaking in Bones 2015
A large, coarse woman comes to Brennan. Her name is Hazel Strike, but her friends call her "Lucky." She's involved with online volunteer groups that try to find missing persons when the police have given up on the cases, or were never involved in the first place.

Lucky is there to discuss Cora Teague who disappeared over three years ago. Her family refuses to report her as missing, claiming she ran off with a boyfriend. The trouble is, she had no known boyfriend.

Also, Lucky is in possession of a keychain voice recorder that she claims to have found at the location of a recent partial, unidenified body dump. She simply wants Tempe to consider the possibility that the new corpse might be Cora.

The case gets more and more bizarre as Cora's brother turns up in odd places as they search the hills of North Carolina for clues.

#20 The Bone Collection 2016

#21 A Conspiracy of Bones 2020

#22 The Bone Code July 2021

#23 Cold, Cold Bones July 2022

#24 The Bone Hacker August 2023
Tempe is working in Montreal when a few scraps of a body are recovered, hacked up by the propellor on a large boat. It is assumed this is a man who jumped off a bridge. A few days later, the rest of the body washes up, but the many died from a gunshot wound. A tattoo identifies him as part of a gang from the islands of Turks and Caicos. For some reason the Medical Examiner from the islands flies immediately to Montreal.

This woman, Tiersa Musgrove, convinces Tempe to return to the Turks and Caicos with her to study a strange set of murders where each victim has had the left hand cut off. There they are sidetracked by a boat found floating with five dead bodies on board.

Continually sidetracked by other cases, Tempe always manages to get back to the mutilated bodies, although she is stymied by the lack of a good microscope and unhelpful people.

This case is a bit like a classic mystery at the end with a whole chapter to explain parts of the story that the reader has not yet heard enough about to understand.

#25 Fire and Bones August 2024
While working on her normal caseload in North Caroline, Tempe is asked by her daughter to grant an interview with a journalist friend in D.C. Brennen isn't thrilled, but agrees for Katy's sake and drives to the capital.

The next day there is a fire in an older building in D.C. that was being used as an illegal rental property. Four people die in the fire. Tempe helps with recovery, and discovers a fifth body in a forgotten sub-basement that had nothing to do with the fire, but dates from about the 1940s.

Soon another building just blocks away burns, and a man is shot in a separate incident. With some research, it is discovered that there may be a connection beteween all these incidents, but not the body in the basement whose identity cannot be determined.

Mystery Series - Lucas Davenport

John Sandford (Random House)

Lucas Davenport is the creation of John Sandford (born 1944), pseudonym of John Roswell Camp. Throughout the long series, Davenport evolves.

Davenport has various roles in the Minneapolis Police Department, or in some way connected to it, as he has several run-ins with them over the course of his career. In some books he works for the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, or is a US Marshall.

His family life provides counterpoint to the high-action police work.

Recurring Characters of Note:
Lucas Davenport
Sister Mary Joseph (Elle Kruger)
Weather Karkinnen- his wife
Kidd- computer genius (there is a separate series featuring him)
Letty- adopted daughter who eventually joins him in investigations
Virgil Flowers- fellow detective (there is a separate series featuring him)

#1 Rules of Prey (1989)

#2 Shadow Prey (1990)

#3 Eyes of Prey (1991)

#4 Silent Prey (1992)

#5 Winter Prey (1993)

#6 Night Prey (1994)

#7 Mind Prey (1995)
A mother and her two daughters are kidnapped in broad daylight by throwing them into a van as the girls are being picked up after school. The woman is a psychiatrist. It is unclear if the kidnapper is a former patient or a family member. There is big money in the family and a convoluted chain of inheritance if the mother and/or children die.

Davenport's gaming company is strongly involved in the solution to the crime.

This book has some violent content involving children, so it's probably not a good read for people who are sensitive on this topic.
Lucas Davenport is trying to decide whether to ask Weather Karkinnen to marry him.

#8 Sudden Prey (1996)

#9 Secret Prey (1998)

#10 Certain Prey (1999)

#11 Easy Prey (2000)

#12 Chosen Prey (2001)

#13 Mortal Prey (2002)

#14 Naked Prey (2003)

#15 Hidden Prey (2004)

#16 Broken Prey (2005)

#17 Invisible Prey (2007)

#18 Phantom Prey (2008)

#19 Wicked Prey (2009)

#20 Storm Prey (2010)

#21 Buried Prey (2011)

#22 Stolen Prey (2012)

#23 Silken Prey (2013)
This book is full of political intrigue, and your interest in that sort of complexity could affect how much you like the story.

Child pornography is found on the computer of the man running against the governonr in the election. However, the governor himself thinks the man is being framed and calls in Davenport to find out the truth of the matter because even though it is his political opponent.

The story runs from political intrigue to cyber crime to burglary. Everyone who is pursuing the case believes that someone from the opposing team is responsible, but it's hard to see how it could be done.

This is one of the books that is a crossover with the Kidd series. Computer nerd Kidd can crack almost anything.

#24 Field of Prey (2014)

#25 Gathering Prey (2015)

#26 Extreme Prey (2016)

#27 Golden Prey (2017)

#28 Twisted Prey (2018)

#29 Neon Prey (2019)

#30 Masked Prey (2020)

#31 Ocean Prey (2021)

#32 Righteous Prey (2022)
A small group five of Bitcoin billionaires decides that they are going to rid the world of one really bad person each. And they are going to do it with high publicity, taking credit for each killing.

The first two murders take place without a hitch, but when they attempt one in the Twin Cities, Davenport finds a few cracks in their careful planning.

Things begin to unravel for the Five, and law enforcement manages to figure out who is to be the next victim. They set up an elaborate surveillance.

The leader of the Five is identified, but can the entire group be found and rounded up?

#33 Judgment Prey (2023)

#34 Toxic Prey (2024)
This is Robin Cook at his finest on steroids!

A physician becames convinced that the earth soon will not be able to support the population of humans. Trained as a virologist, he sees people as a virus that will kill Gaia. He develops a strain of the Marburg virus similar to Ebolal, with a huge mortality rate.

He manages to create a vaccine with which he treats a handful of volunteers who are willing to risk their own lives to save Gaia by releasing the deadly virus into the general population after they have recovered.

Investigators do not know this at first. They think they are only looking for the missing doctor. But the farther they follow his trail, his deadly scheme comes to light. Will they be able to curtail the doctor's plans to release the virus?

Inspector Lansing - Carol Carnac

Carol Carnac is a pen name of Edith Caroline Rivett.She was a prolific mystery writer from 1931 until her death in 1958. As a child she lived in both England and Australia. She is credited with creating fictional detectives Chief Inspector Robert Macdonald, Inspector Ryvet, Chief Inspector Julian Rivers, and Inspector Lansing. Some of the books overlap, featuring more than one of these characters.

Her books follow the style of the Golden Age of Mystery. They are difficult to find, and I'm still trying to determine which 18 feature Inspector Lansing (sometimes spelled Lancing). A few have been re-published as British Classics. Based on the three I have read, I'd love to find more

So far, I've only been able to find these three books, but I give them a very high rating for plot, characters, and locations.

Crossed Skis (1952)
The book begins with a group of young people who have loosely banded together to take a ski holiday to Austria by ferry and train. Sixteen people, most of whom don't really know one another travel to the ski resort.

Meanwhile, Rivers and Lansing are attempting to solve a puzzling murder in London that occurs in a boarding house. The neer-do-well son of the owner seems to be key to the solution. One of the flats caught fire, and the body of the lodger was found thrust into the gas flame so that his face and hands are too disfigured for identification. The police suspect the body is not that of the lodger.

On the ski holiday, strange events begin to happen, and the members of the party suspiciously begin sorting out who they think they can and can't trust.

The book culminates with a dangerous ski chase in a blizzard.

Murder Among Members (1955)
This is a stright-up police procedural, and is definitely not the quality of some of her other books. Inspector Lancing and Rivers are both featured, but we don't get any idea of them as personalities at all. There is a lot of London slang specific to the time period, sometimes making the book hard to follow.

A hostel has been built across from the House of Parliment so that members from the country can find decent lodgings without having to travel around London. It is a boring, no-frills, 1950s block of small flats. On a night when there are only a few MPs in residence, the assistant manager is discovered dead in a back street beside the building. He has obviously jumped from either an upper story or the roof, or more likely, was thrown down.

The rest of the book consists of the police questioning various people in classic mystery fashion. There is nothing wrong with the logic or the progression, but the book is somewhat "bare bones." It's an excellent glimpse into mid-20th-century London.

Warning- one use of a word considered inappropriate in this day and age.

Impact of Evidence (1958)

This is set in the farm country of Wales in the winter. Life is harsh, and the book does a convincing job of portraying that condition. You really can feel the hills and the snow and the horrible flood that cuts the small settlement off from the rest of the country for days.

During that time of isolation, an old man who probably shouldn't be driving is broadsided by another car when he recklessly drives in front of that car. The impacted car is pushed into the river where it is lodged. The driver of the other car, though injured, stumbles down to the closest farm to get help.

When a group of men rally under nearly impossible weather conditions to rescue the old man from the car in the river, he is determined to be dead. The huge surprise is that there is another man dead in the back seat.

The story unwinds methodically with many a suspect and potential motive. In the classic mystery tradition, the guilty party is not revealed until the very end.

Victoria Trumbull - Cynthia Riggs

Cynthia Riggs

Cynthia Riggs has been a geologist, operator of the Chesapeake Bay Ferry, and a rigger on Martha's Vinyard.

This series is based on Martha's Vinyard, and stars the nonagenarian, Victoria Trumbull. The atmosphere and characters of the New England setting are wonderfully done. If you have any experience with people from and life in this area you'll have plenty to chuckle at. I love the details of the island setting and the unusual place names. This is regional fiction at its best.

Victoria is always 92, and the books can be read in any order. However, Jack in the Pulpit sets the stage for events mentioned in the other books.

One small warning- language is not toned down.

Recurring Characters:
Victoria Trumbell, age 92
Elizabeth, her adult granddaughter
Hope, her adult great-grand niece
Howland Atherton

#1- Deadly Nightshade (2001)
Victoria is waiting on the dock for Elizabeth to finish her shift as assistant Harbormaster. It is dusk. Victoria hears a blood-curdling scream cove across the water. Elizabeth returns, but she has not heard it. The Harbormaster, Domingo, believes Victoria and the go out in a small boat to track down the noise. They find a discmboweled body, and it is a local man.

Domingo is a retired cop who has been hired from out of town for the summer. A great many local authorities are not happy about that because he knows for certain that there is a lot of skimming being done due to the lax menthod of collecting and recording harbor fees. Domingo brings in someone to set up a computer program to track the money and makes quite a few enemies.

Many of the summer hires are local highschoolers, mostly children or grandchildren of the people who think they can do anything they want. Coupled with having no work ethic, they are making Domingo and Elizabeth's jobs miserable.

#2- The Cranefly Orchid Murders (2002)
This is one of my personal favorites of the series.

An elderly lady is still living in her family home on a large area of land known as Sachem's Rock. She is estranged from her family and refuses to leave it to any children or grandchildren. The Conservationists want the property. A developer wants the property. The tribe wants it to build a casino, a commune wants to take control, and the town of West Tisbury wants to turn it into a campground and park.

The developer talks the woman into selling to him, to everyone's dismay. Victoria is recruited by the conservationists to try to find some endangered plants on the property so they can have development stopped. Victoria teams up with Robin, an eleven-year-old nerdy boy, to hunt for plants by following the "ancient ways," pathways through the property that are supposed to remain public rights-of-way.

Victoria and Robin do find Cranefly Orchids. They also find fences and a man living underground. Then the orchids disappear and different ones are planted in their place.

What is going on?

#3- The Cemetery Yew (2003)
The town receives a request to disinter a casket from a ten-year-old suicide. It will be picked up by hearse because the body is going to be transferred to Milwaukee for reburial in a family plot. However, the grave is empty. The curmudgeonly cemetery supervisor blames the backhoe operator, and the blame goes round and round.

Howland Atherton's cousin Dahlia is retiring from the Foreign Service and shows up, claiming she owns half his house. She is in poor health, taking cancer treatments. She also comes with a raucous toucan that drives everyone nuts. When she and Howland can't get along, Victoria takes in Dahlia and the bird, but Elizabeth can't stand them.

Meanwhile, when the hearse arrives on the ferry, the driver has disappeared and the vehicle is locked. Then several other off-islanders appear and are somewhat quickly killed! They all seem to have ties to Dahlia, and someone is also trying to kill her.

#4- Jack in the Pulpit (2004)
Given some of the events, this book seems to be first in the series although it was not written first.

This is a book with complex layers. The previous pastor of Tisbury Church was named Jack. The new pastor is also named Jack and there is some conflict between them. Meanwhile, four people die in one month, but not of apparently related causes.

Elizabeth has divorced her husband, Lockwood, and is living with Victoria. In a rare case of poor analysis of another person, Victoria gives him the benefit of the doubt, but he's pretty much a psychopath who comes to the island to stalk Elizabeth.

It begins to look like the four deaths in one month are pretty unusual, and Victoria traces them to recipes made with deadly wild Amanita mushrooms. But who is trying to kill whom?

There is a classic who-dun-it denoument when Victoria reveals all at a meeting of the Kippers Women's Club where she was scheduled to speak on the history of police work in West Tisbury..

#5- The Paperwhite Narcissus (2005)
The publisher of the local paper, Colly Jameson, is receiving threatening letters, and all of them seem to be in response to unexplained accidents or deaths in the area. The truth is that nobody likes Colly anyway. He's a narcissistic bully with 4 ex-wives and one unhappy current wife. He is firing staff members, claiming he doesn't need them in the summer when the truth is that he just wasn't to use college-age interns for free.

However, an attempted murder, a successful murder, and an unexplained death all seem linked to Colly.

When he fires Victoria Trumbull, she goes to work for Tom Botts who is printing a weekly, one-page, alternative news sheet. She also gets Colly to pay her to find out who is sending the threatening letters.

#6- Indian Pipes (2006)
The local Native American sovereign nation is negotiating to build a casino on the island. However, there is a lot of disagreement as to the form it should take. A local contractor, Jubal Burkhart, who has to sign off on various permits is taking bribes from the factions.

Meanwhile, a motorcycle rally comes to the island. The noisy grouup is not popular with a number of the locals.

Hiram Pennybacker, an older man who doesn't know when to stop talking seems rather harmless, but he disappears. When Jubal's house burns to the ground, a body is found inside among the stacks of hoarded papers and magazines. Jubal's property turns out to be worth $18 million, but who inherits.

#7- Shooting Star (2007)
Victoria has written a new screenplay of Dracula that she hopes will be taken quite seriously by those who choose to attend the local theater production.

Instead the youngest actor goes missing, and others are being injured or killed. Substitutions in the cast result in the play becoming a hit farce, much to Victoria's dismay.

There is so much animosity between cast members and the director it's easy to draw certain conclsions about the deaths. Meanwhile, where is Teddy, the young cast member?

#8- Death and Honesty (2009)
The town assessors are jacking up tax bills and skimming the extra off the top. But someone is trying to horn in on their operation.

Meanwhile, a rather trashy and naive woman who moved to the Island and bought an old historic home had that house torn down, and she built a modern mansion. She is married to a TV evangelist. Despite her flaws, Victoria likes Delilah. Delilah is not naive enough to stand for the outrageous tax bill she receives, and she stirs up a hornet's nest.

Meanwhile, what is the good reverend up to?

#9- Touch-Me-Not (2010)
LeRoy Watts, the local electrician, fires his assistant Jerry Sparks for drug use. But Jerry has something incriminating on LeRoy and threatens him. LeRoy uses his illegal Taser on Jerry to teach him a lesson, and possibly due to his drugged condition, Jerry dies.

LeRoy has to cover up what happened. And he begins scrambling around to recover the videos Jerry was threatening to show his wife.

Of course, the videos come to light before LeRoy can find them.

Meanwhile, someone has been making "heavy breather" calls to many of the women on the island, most of whom are members of a knitting club. The leader of this group is an expert on stalkers, and she gets involved in unraveling what's going on.

This is a more complex plot than some of the books in this series, with multiple possible solutions before the end of the book. I liked this one a lot.

#10 The Bee Balm Murders (2011)
Orion Nanopoulos arrives on the island for an extended stay to lay fiber optic cable. He rents a room at Victoria's house. Not long after they start digging to lay the cable, a man is found dead in the trench. An all-night rain has washed away any clues as to how he got there.

It turns out that the dead man has connections to the mob, but meanwhile there is a lot of local hanky-panky going on with the contracts for the fiber optic cable.

#11 Poison Ivy (2014)
Thackery Wilson has been striving for several years to establish a campus of a mainland university and to bring higher education to the island. Victoria is hired as an adjunct professor to teach a class on poetry.

But when they open the classroom building, the stench drives them all away and the dead body of a professor who was thought to be on an extended leave is found. Soon, more bodies are uncovered, and they have to admit there is a serial killer on the island who seems to have something against professors.

Another untenured professor, Roberta Chadwick, is busy alienating her three graduate students by stealing their research to publish under her own name, thereby assuring that she will receive tenure. The students band together and decide to take matters into their own hands.

#12 Bloodroot (2016)
An older woman, Mrs. Wilmington, who raised her for grandchildren dies unexpectedly in the dentist's chair. She was not liked by anyone, including her grandchildren. When an autopsy shows she died of arsenic poisoning, there are too many suspects.

On the same day that Mrs. Wilmington dies, the dental receptionist accidentally drowns on her way home from the office.

The grandchildren are all adults now, and they all have motives to get rid of grandma, chief among them is to get her money. But a tangled web of relationships relating to the staff of the dental clinic also emerges. Maybe the receptionist's death was not an accident.

Elizabeth's psychopathic ex-husband is stalking her again.

#13 Trumpet of Death (2017)
Victoria takes her young and rather simple-minded boarder, Zack, on a hike and shows him the mushrooms called Trupets of Death, although they are an edible delicacy, their black color resulted in the morbid name.

Zack wasn't really paying attention. He decides he wants to sicken his girlfriend and perhaps cause her to abort the baby she claims is his. When the girl's family realizes he has brought them a delicacy, they serve the mushrooms at a fancy dinner.

When people start dying, Zack is convinced he has killed them all with the mushrooms. However, Victoria knows better and searches for other means and motives for the deaths.

#14 Widow's Wreath (2018)
Penny, a young cousin of Victoria's has requested that her wedding reception be held on Victoria's property on the Island. Victoria agrees, but she soon loarns that the whole affair is huge and much more complex than she would like to host.

When a body is found hanging in Victoria's seldom-visited cellar, everything is postponed. In fact, we soon learn that Penny was marrying Rocco for his money, and he was marrying her for her money. But when they each learn that neither one has money, the wedding is called off.

Rocco's family has serious ties to the mob, and several of his relatives are on the island for the wedding.