The pain woke you up at about 3 a.m., screeching from your jaw all the way to the top of your head like an icicle straight through your cranium.
You eased out of bed, suppressing a howl and wondering how a quarter-inch-square bit of enamel and dentin could bring a big person like you to your knees. And why do toothaches always happen during off-hours?
It’s not your dentist’s fault. He works hard to keep your smile sparkly because that his job. But in the new novel “Dead Renegade” by Victoria Houston, Dr. Paul Osborne also has a part-time gig: he’s a deputy for the Loon Lake police department, and he’s just had a brush with death.
When Doc Osborne’s daughter, Erin, asked her father for help in locating an antique dentist’s cabinet in the basement of a local shop, she figured Doc could identify what she was seeking. As one of the town’s dentists (now retired), Doc had spent years looking down in the mouths of his neighbors. He would know what one of those cabinets might look like. Heck, he probably had one of them once.
But Doc didn’t have his mind on some old piece of furniture. Lewellyn Ferris, Loon Lake’s chief of police and the woman Doc loved, was going to her class reunion and he wasn’t invited. It bit at his consciousness and he fretted, his mind on Lew. So when he discovered a skeleton wrapped up in a moldy old rug, it startled him some.
Up beyond town, Curt Calverson was on the phone, as usual, and pacing back and forth on his deck. It seemed to C.J., Curt’s toothsome wife, that Curt was always making calls and “moving money,” but she didn’t know exactly what kind of business he was in. When she asked, she got a backhand in answer.
And in a nearby, tumbledown house with peeling paint and a broken concrete sidewalk, Edna Shradtke welcomed her son home from prison. Few knew that Bobby Shradtke had been paroled; if they had, they would have hollered about it. Bobby Shradtke, the oldest of the notorious Shradtke boys, had been at the root of a lot of trouble in Loon Lake over the years.
Now, on behalf of little brother Ron, Bobby had some business to attend.
Is finding a good mystery like pulling teeth? Then relax, sit back, grab “Dead Renegade” and open it wide.
Fans of Houston’s “Loon Lake” series will be happy to know that all the main characters are back again, along with a new, intriguing one to add to the mix (and that’s all I’m sayin’). The return of old favorites, however, shouldn’t deter new visitors to this fictitious northern Wisconsin town. Slim and quick to read, this — the 10th in the series — can easily be enjoyed as a standalone novel.
Fishermen, campers and anybody who loves a gentle mystery without gory violence will want to bite into “Dead Renegade.” Get your own copy, because whodunits this good are scarce as hens’ teeth. n Look for the reviewed book at a bookstore or a library near you. You may also find the book at online book retailers.
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The Bookworm is Terri Schlichenmeyer. Terri has been reading since she was 3 years old and never goes anywhere without a book. She lives in Wisconsin with three dogs and 10,000 books.
