BURIED DREAMS

Journalist Lewis Cole (Killer Waves, 2002, etc.) digs up more than he bargains for when he investigates the death of an amateur archaeologist.

Even Cole doesn’t understand why he’s so shaken by Jon Ericson’s murder. Their acquaintance was brief—a handful of encounters over the course of a summer—with most of the conversation taken up with Jon’s theory that his Viking ancestors had migrated far enough south from Newfoundland to establish colonies on New Hampshire’s abbreviated seacoast. But when he arrives at Ericson’s one night, hoping finally to see the artifacts that prove the offbeat theory, Cole finds the house shrouded in crime scene tape and can’t let the case alone. Despite a warning from his best friend, Detective Diane Woods, who’s afraid any civilian interference will jeopardize her upcoming promotion, he questions the three people Ericson consulted on his quest: UNH professor Olivia Hendricks, historian Brian Mulligan, and Native American activist William Bear Gagnon. With a little help from his mobster friend Felix Tinios, Lewis finds Jon’s brother Ray, who’s been on the lam since the shooting. Even a nasty car crash—the result of loosened lug nuts—and an arrest by the Maine state police can’t stop Lewis once he’s decided he must find out who killed a nice guy with more than one ax to grind.

So much geography you’ll want a road map, but briskly paced, with a neatly sprung ending.