Lori Handeland, Blue Moon

Blue Moon

Lori Handeland

St. Martin's, Oct 2004, $6.99, 352 pp.

ISBN: 0312991347

In Mimiwa, Wisconsin, police officer Jessie McQuade investigates a car accident between Karen Larson and a wolf that apparently bit the teacher. As Karen is rushed to the hospital, Jessie searches the woods until she runs into a naked man living in a nearby cabin. He offers her nothing new on her case except a desire to make love with him. Jessie does find a small totem at the accident site.

The next day Karen goes berserk at school forcing Sheriff Clyde Johnston to kill her. Jessie realizes that rabies takes three months to incubate in people so wonders what really happened. On a hunch, she takes the totem to Mimiwa University where she meets visiting expert Will Cadotte, the naked man from the night before. He is stunned by the totem who says he belongs to the wolf clan that uses these artifacts, but this one is different. It is that of an auwishuk, an evil Manitou. As Jessie struggles with a supernatural evil truth, she and Will fall in love, but as the evidence piles up she wonders if she can trust the professor.

BLUE MOON is an exciting werewolf romance starring the ultimate disbeliever and the "perfect" counterpoint to prove that sometimes there are strange phenomena beyond the norm. The who-done-it is cleverly enhanced by deep secondary characters, some of whom are on the wrong side of the American law (who knows what the law is on the other side). Still, it is the match-up of the lead duo that makes for a howling time for those who read this entertaining, paranorma, police procedural romance.

Harriet Klausner