Winter's End
John Richards
St. Martin's Dec 2003, $23.95, 304 pp.
ISBN: 0312310978

Aroostock County, Maine Sheriff Dale Townsend and Deputy Andy Miller are driving south of Winter's End in a storm when a flash of lightning enables them to see a twenty something male out in the rain holding knives. The two law enforcement officials get closer only to see the young man hovering over an obviously dead woman with stab wounds all over her chest. The cops arrest the culprit for murder.

The victim is quickly identified as forty years old nurse Angela Lamond, but the Sheriff has no idea who his incarcerated suspect is. The guy has no record and refuses to even divulge his name. Dale calls his friend former FBI interrogator Alex Rourke to help on what appears is an open and shut case. Now a private investigator, Alex leaves Boston for Maine to see if he can coax answers from the apparent culprit. Though he slowly has some success, Alex concludes that this relatively silent soul anticipated his arrival, but why this seems so remains unknown.

WINTER'S END is an incredible police procedural that hooks the reader from the opening grisly scene to the final unexpected twist even with readers expecting a final curve ball, but not one that would make Blyleven proud. The story line never slows down as the Sheriff and the ex-Fed try to break a vicious case that seems so obviously resolved. The cast is strong and believable so that readers will appreciate spending December in WINTER'S END, Maine.

Harriet Klausner