Going Local

Starred review from July 15, 1996
Two corpses, a birthday and a hangover only add to the difficulties already facing sheriff Jules Clement, as Blue Deer, Mont., fills up with tourists for the annual summertime Wrangle. Environmental lawyer Otto Scobey and Bonnie Siskowitz, a local lass with a taste for partying, have been run over while inside their small tent. Otto's work on Dragonfly, a planned posh spread of condos, resort and nature preserve, prompts Jules to suspect anyone connected to the project. Dragonfly folks claim all is well and Otto will be sadly missed. That story doesn't jibe, however, with Jules's discovery of the dead man's ex-wife, a Dragonfly partner, in Otto's kitchen with his files and a shotgun. Tracing the tedious details of Otto's legal work, Jules is just beginning to consider that all may not be sweet among the Dragonfly investors when there is a spectacularly ghastly and suspicious accident under the Wrangle's big lights. As in her first mystery, The Edge of the Crazies, Harrison mingles dark and (sometimes strange) comic elements to good effect. She is a dab hand at creating an assortment of characters, tossing them together, giving them something to squabble over and setting them loose--and if some end up dead, well, that just gives droll, intelligent Jules a way to earn his keep.