HANG
FIRE
AVAILABLE IN
HARDCOVER
AND EBOOK
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Five Star, $25.95 hardcover and $3.99 Kindle ebook, 2013.
Why kill a
human being
with an antique muzzle-loader? Each year in the entire country, only a
handful of people die that way, and half the deaths are self-inflicted.
In either case, loading and firing a flintlock or cap-and-ball weapon
takes way too much time, fuss, and expertise.
A pretty young teacher
is killed by a ball from a Revolutionary War-era musket during an
encampment of historical reenactors on a river in Porcupine County.
Sheriff Steve Martinez—Lakot a by birth, white by upbringing—is
troubled
by the victim’s role-playing “persona” as a camp-following frontier
prostitute. Several other reenactors had been her customers, and sex
often is a motive for murder. All the same, there is no evidence of
foul play, forensic or otherwise, and the death is
ruled an accident.
The next few months,
however, bring a surprising number of seemingly unrelated
muzzle-loading deaths in the Upper Midwest. A statistical anomaly—or
something worse? Steve is suspicious.
To find the answer and
to keep the peace in Porcupine County, the sheriff must battle
skeptics, a lack of forensic evidence, an ever-shrinking departmental
budget, and a suddenly rocky romance with his longtime love, a
beautiful redhead named Ginny Fitzgerald.
Hot on the trail in the
deep woods, Steve suddenly discovers that he is his quarry’s newest
target.
Hang Fire,
Henry Kisor’s fourth Steve Martinez mystery, takes place in a remote
and beautiful wilderness region on the shore of Lake Superior in
western Upper Michigan, a surprising magnet for both colorful
characters and dark resentments. |