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John McIntire mysteries #2
Hunter's Dance: A John McIntire Mystery
Autumn in Michigan's Upper Peninsula means hunting season, and the fall of 1950 finds most everyone in St. Adele township hunting for something -- deer, grouse, uranium; love, redemption, escape; a story, a husband, a murderer.
When the son of summer residents at the exclusive Shawanok Club is found dead after an uproarious dance at the town hall, the sheriff is flummoxed, and everyone is Bambi was found in the loft over the tool shed, bound, gagged, and inexpertly scalped. Who better to search for the killer than St. Adele's reluctant constable, John McIntire?
The trail he must follow branches off like the spokes of a wheel, in multiple directions, leading to multiple dead ends. The only common link seems to be the boy's a father who is mysteriously unavailable, a mother, on a mission to see her son's killer dead, who remains sequestered in her rented mansion, baking cream pies and playing the piano. Her imported private eye seems more interested in dallying with McIntire's exotic Aunt Siobhan, who's just turned up on his doorstep some 25 years after she ran off with a carnival worker as a teen. And Bambi's mentor on a summer's search for uranium, a hot prospect in Flambeau County, is more conversant with archaeological artifacts than Geiger counters.
McIntire's investigation takes him from the haunts of the affluent visitors, to the backwoods camp of a Rube Goldberg hermit, and finally to an abandoned gold mine where he learns what really happened that summer's night....
When the son of summer residents at the exclusive Shawanok Club is found dead after an uproarious dance at the town hall, the sheriff is flummoxed, and everyone is Bambi was found in the loft over the tool shed, bound, gagged, and inexpertly scalped. Who better to search for the killer than St. Adele's reluctant constable, John McIntire?
The trail he must follow branches off like the spokes of a wheel, in multiple directions, leading to multiple dead ends. The only common link seems to be the boy's a father who is mysteriously unavailable, a mother, on a mission to see her son's killer dead, who remains sequestered in her rented mansion, baking cream pies and playing the piano. Her imported private eye seems more interested in dallying with McIntire's exotic Aunt Siobhan, who's just turned up on his doorstep some 25 years after she ran off with a carnival worker as a teen. And Bambi's mentor on a summer's search for uranium, a hot prospect in Flambeau County, is more conversant with archaeological artifacts than Geiger counters.
McIntire's investigation takes him from the haunts of the affluent visitors, to the backwoods camp of a Rube Goldberg hermit, and finally to an abandoned gold mine where he learns what really happened that summer's night....
- GenresMystery
301 pages, Hardcover
First published January 30, 2004
3 people are currently reading
24 people want to read
About the author
Kathleen Hills
20 books8 followersKathleen Hills spent the first forty years of her life in rural northern Minnesota before leaving for the real world and a career in speech and language pathology. After determining that ten years in the real world should be all that is demanded of anyone, she turned to writing. Her first novel, Past Imperfect, is available from Poisoned Pen Press. Kathleen divides her time between her home in Duluth, Minnesota and North Scotland and is currently at work on a third John McIntire mystery.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
September 27, 2010
This lady specializes in the North Woods area of northern Michigan past and present and not only knows her stuff, but portrays her characters in a real way bringing out the universal character traits in a nice way with gentle humor involved as well. And her respect and acceptance comes through, too.
April 4, 2014
H
A subtle, well-crafted tale featuring Constable John McIntire
From the opening polka to the final shocking solution, easy-moving town Constable John McIntire performs a carefully constructed investigation into the death of the wealthy scion of intruders into the Upper Peninsula. He has an improbable name—Bambi—and he meets an impossible death at the hands of person or persons unknown.
It is late autumn in a previous time—the 1950’s, on that odd piece of Michigan that’s actually closer to Wisconsin and Canada than to the state of its control. UPrs tend to be clannish, suspicious of outsiders and easily willing to help out their neighbors. In the town of St. Adele, the traditional fall dance and get-together, brings out the best and the not so good. Booze, cigarettes and young male hormones propel Bambi Moreland, an Easterner summer resident, here with his parents who are ensconced at a nearby exclusive private vacation club, into sudden physical fisticuffs with a local Indian lad. McIntire breaks up the fight, sends Marvin Wall home from the Town Hall after relieving him of a wicked-looking knife, and hopes that’s the end of it.
McIntire is an interesting character. He’s native to the area, although he was absent for many years, and he doesn’t really like being the town constable, because it occasionally entails dragging long-time acquaintances, and even relatives, up before the local justice. The book is replete with quirky, engaging and fascinating characters, some of whom have little to do except enrich their scene, a sheriff who is the most engaging manipulator you can imagine, and a setting that is efficiently and carefully utilized in the best possible way to energize and affect the course of the plot.
This is a complex multi-dimension plot, involving all the principal characters in several different ways. It moves well through out the book. There are no let-downs although if readers are looking for a slam-bang page-turner, Hunter’s Dance is not it. This is delightful crime fiction with nuanced characters, delicate balance between pace and exposition and excellent dialog. Operating on multiple levels, author Hills creates a compelling, believable world of whacky uranium and gold seekers, townspeople who’d rather be left alone, thank you, and a good deal that isn’t what it first seems to be.
A subtle, well-crafted tale featuring Constable John McIntire
From the opening polka to the final shocking solution, easy-moving town Constable John McIntire performs a carefully constructed investigation into the death of the wealthy scion of intruders into the Upper Peninsula. He has an improbable name—Bambi—and he meets an impossible death at the hands of person or persons unknown.
It is late autumn in a previous time—the 1950’s, on that odd piece of Michigan that’s actually closer to Wisconsin and Canada than to the state of its control. UPrs tend to be clannish, suspicious of outsiders and easily willing to help out their neighbors. In the town of St. Adele, the traditional fall dance and get-together, brings out the best and the not so good. Booze, cigarettes and young male hormones propel Bambi Moreland, an Easterner summer resident, here with his parents who are ensconced at a nearby exclusive private vacation club, into sudden physical fisticuffs with a local Indian lad. McIntire breaks up the fight, sends Marvin Wall home from the Town Hall after relieving him of a wicked-looking knife, and hopes that’s the end of it.
McIntire is an interesting character. He’s native to the area, although he was absent for many years, and he doesn’t really like being the town constable, because it occasionally entails dragging long-time acquaintances, and even relatives, up before the local justice. The book is replete with quirky, engaging and fascinating characters, some of whom have little to do except enrich their scene, a sheriff who is the most engaging manipulator you can imagine, and a setting that is efficiently and carefully utilized in the best possible way to energize and affect the course of the plot.
This is a complex multi-dimension plot, involving all the principal characters in several different ways. It moves well through out the book. There are no let-downs although if readers are looking for a slam-bang page-turner, Hunter’s Dance is not it. This is delightful crime fiction with nuanced characters, delicate balance between pace and exposition and excellent dialog. Operating on multiple levels, author Hills creates a compelling, believable world of whacky uranium and gold seekers, townspeople who’d rather be left alone, thank you, and a good deal that isn’t what it first seems to be.
August 27, 2011
Slow but steady, and has some amazing character studies within the plot. She has a way of implying something without beating the detail to death, much like how it is when you get to know someone... you realize certain things about who they are and why they do what they do, but you don't usually dwell on it, either. Plus, the ending is very well crafted. It's pretty easy to guess who committed the crime (at least by the time you roll into the last 50 pages or so) but the reason why is a complete surprise.
January 14, 2016
Too many characters, so that I had to make a list of them. Took too long to get the story going, although I liked the Upper Peninsula setting.
Autumn 1950 in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, and Bambi, the son of wealthy seasonal residents, is found murdered and scalped. Constable John McIntire takes on the case, with suspicion pointing to a Native American young man. McIntire heads toward a hermit trying to find gold in an abandoned mine. What really happened that night?
Autumn 1950 in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, and Bambi, the son of wealthy seasonal residents, is found murdered and scalped. Constable John McIntire takes on the case, with suspicion pointing to a Native American young man. McIntire heads toward a hermit trying to find gold in an abandoned mine. What really happened that night?
March 18, 2016
Weather is always a main character in this series. It wasn't winter, but it was getting too close to still be able to hunt for clues and people. John McIntire, the human main character, is a man with dogged persistence and something hidden in his past which is just a hint in this book. The other new characters in this book are exotic and marginal and add a dash of "color". The denouement did take me by surprise.
June 14, 2012
Michigan with all its splender still has its crasy's. The upper penn. is a mystery all in its self and I like how Kathleen puts in the little secrest places, in this story it was the old Abanned mines , and the twist at the end of this book still has me thinking. what happen years ago to a lonely child up there in the U.P.
December 10, 2007
Starting another series in the middle....I will be reading more of Hill's John McIntire mysteries. I believed in the characters - quirky yet realistic. The northern MI setting seemed real. And I really didn't see the end coming at all!
October 12, 2011
Rich and dark like chocolate... beautifully worked (and the constable still has his personal mysteries).
March 15, 2014
it was a good murder mystery, a series- John McIntire is the main character and a likable one.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews