Whoo? — Richard Hoyt

When private eye John Denson travels to Washington State to clear a client of a small-time marijuana charge, he finds himself in the midst of a turf war between the mighty logging industry and the imperiled spotted owl. When a spotted owl is found murdered, strangled, to be precise, Denson's sometime partner Willie Prettybird, a Cowlitz Indian, thinks that the Spirit Animals want Denson to investigate the killing. That's when things start to get cosmic. First the Corpus Delecti is misplaced, then the beautiful Jennie MacIvar of the Fish and Wildlife Service, who was determined to find the killer, is murdered. One thing's for certain: this is much more complicated than a simple marijuana case. Denson may be the next victim.