DEAD HOT SHOT

A police chief and a retired dentist team up once more to solve several murders.

On Thanksgiving Day in Loon Lake, Wis., Nolan Reece is found dead in the waters near her lakeside mansion. Her overbearing manner has given many people reason to hate her. Nolan has squandered all of her father’s fortune except for her daughter Blue’s $20 million trust fund. The result of a youthful indiscretion, Blue suffers from her mother’s wild mood swings. So does Andy, who was paid to marry Nolan and give Blue a father figure. Once Police Chief Lew Ferris calls on her boyfriend and part-time deputy, retired dentist Doc Osborne, to check out the scene, it becomes clear that Nolan was murdered. The family and friends attending Blue’s engagement party the night of the murder had been joined by Nolan’s new pet project, the Dark Sky sisters: serious Frances and vivacious Josie. The girls’ foster mother, crabby Mildred Taggert, who owns the local grocery store and sells hunting and fishing licenses, becomes the next victim when she’s shot in her yard. With help from nonpareil tracker and fishing guide Ray Pradt and computer expert Gina Palmer, who’s on the trail of a credit-card theft ring, Lew and Doc manage to end the carnival of crime.

The ninth in the Loon Lake series (Dead Boogie, 2006, etc.) is a charmingly descriptive look at Wisconsin’s north country wrapped around a so-so mystery.