Death in a Live Forest — John Holt

Very little comes easy in the West, not even murder. Here, Ed Bouchee, a small town private detective living on the northern high plains, is asked to investigate a gruesome murder. From that moment on nothing is as it seems. Up is down and white fades to black. Bouchee and his headstrong Springer spaniel companion, The Dog, wander the slightly mean, out-of-kilter streets of Biederbeck, and the lonesome, often terrifying, mountain backroads of central Montana in search of Mark Grace's killer. Along the way eccentric Biederbeck luminaries like The Count, Dirt Tidrow, Liz and Sam Jones, Miskis, and others combine to both help and hinder the often-bewildered detective. Was Grace dispatched to protect an illegal trout netting operation? Was he killed in a squabble over a marginal timber-cutting contract? Or was the reason much darker, much crazier?