WINTER KILL

In Norgard’s mystery novel, one in a series, an Alaskan P.I. questions whether his wife’s alleged suicide was murder.

The third book in the author’s Sidney Reed Mystery series begins with Reed’s wife, Molly, rendezvousing with a silver-haired man who passes her a package and says, “There are decent people in that company. I can’t let a few bad apples ruin it.” Cut to a year later, when Reed is closing in on the first anniversary—Christmas Eve—of his wife’s death, a night when he was out working. Her death was ruled a suicide, but Reed has always had his doubts, which only intensify when he opens his front door and arctic air blows in a note that reads, “I know what happened.” Reed and his wife had been drifting apart before her death, but now he thinks of her lovingly and to the point of obsession. His fixation on Molly and her death comes between him and his lover of several months, Maria Maldonado, a well-known Anchorage journalist. To learn more about his wife’s final days, Reed visits Molly’s former supervisor, Evelyn Fisher, only to learn Molly had left the company more than a month before she died. When he visits Molly’s grave, he finds a fresh rose—and two more frozen beneath the snow. It appears someone else loved Molly, and along with the roses, that person left footprints…a woman’s footprints. This novel is the third in a series, but it stands up well as a stand-alone. Reed is likable but flawed; he drinks a six-pack of beer a day, tends to daydream, and fails to listen to his doctors or to those he loves. The characters are well developed and memorably described: “I guessed her to be in her mid-50s but trying hard not to be.” The pacing is brisk, and deadly twists keep the pages turning. In the picturesque Alaskan setting, snow continually twirls and sparkles, and the lime-green streaks of the aurora borealis slide across a star-choked sky.

A compelling mystery with a warm heart and cold-hearted killings.