THE DOUBLE-JACK MURDERS

Two more cases of murder for Blight County (Idaho) Sheriff Bo Tully, one of them involving a disappearance 80 years ago, the other a matter of preventing his own demise.

Agatha Wrenn can’t say for sure that her father was murdered. But nobody’s heard anything about either gold prospector Tom Link or Sean O’Boyle, 14, ever since they disappeared in the Idaho’s Snowy Mountains back in 1927. So there’s a good chance that Tully (The Blight Way, 2006, etc.) will have to tell Agatha and her fetching great-niece Bunny Hunter that they’re dead. The complication is that while he’s up in the Snowies with his Pap and tracker Dave Perkins, Tully may well follow the long-gone pair into the great beyond. Lucas Kincaid, a homicidal maniac he’d sent to jail, has escaped custody, killed two guards and taken off for the mountains he knows like the back of his hand, with every indication that he intends to welcome Tully with both barrels. Other writers would play this setup for suspense, but McManus (Kerplunk, 2007, etc.) goes for the funny bone. The duel between Tully and Kincaid is constantly upstaged by roughhousing, good-natured putdowns, harmless flirtations and some epic meals not likely to grace the pages of Gourmet.

Not much urgency to that 1927 disappearance, and surprisingly little more to the mad killer lurking among the pines. Readers are advised to kick back and relax, like Tully.