Lew Ferris #4
I forget about these books in between reads, but I’m a fan. Whenever I pick one up I’m always drawn in by a great read, and what’s better than that? Lew – or Llewellyn – Ferris is the sheriff of Loon Lake, Wisconsin, and she’s an avid fisherwoman, something that’s woven through all the books. She’s been dating the town dentist for awhile, sharing a cozy trading off houses type relationship with him. Doc also enjoys fly fishing. So far, so cozy, but these books aren’t quite cozy, though they have many, many cozy elements to them.
As the book opens we meet a couple who are avid “wolf watchers” – wolves have returned to Wisconsin and their group sets up in different places just to watch and photograph them. Unfortunately, the male half of the couple is a domineering know it all, and he’s been bullying his wife for most of their marriage. The bullying appears to carry over to the wolf watching group. He gets in a dispute with one of the group and leaves in a huff, taking his wife. Very unfortunately, the couple disappear.
That’s where Sheriff Lew comes in. She’s called in to the search, and she asks a good friend of hers, Ray (also her deputy), to help her with tracking, at which he’s exceptional. She gets the team in action and Ray is tragically successful in his search. Meanwhile, the police also find a stash of illegal guns. The guns assume center stage for most of the book, and it seems the guns and the couple’s accidental discovery of them are probably connected.
Ray has another problem: he coaches a fishing team and one of his students has been approached to fudge his results to provide a successful sports betting opportunity on his upcoming fishing tournament. The man threatened the student’s family, and he’s terrified. Lew and Ray handle this part of things, but the sports betting lurks at the fringes of the story.
It’s not too complicated of a plot, just complicated enough, and what’s outstanding and enjoyable about Huston’s books are the array of characters and the community she creates around them. I don’t know if Loon Lake is real or not but it sure feels like it is, and so does Lew herself, who is a woman comfortable in her own skin but not so unbelievably perfect that you can’t, as a reader, relate to her.
The mystery part of the book is suspenseful and gripping. The set up for the solution is extremely well done, and the relationships surrounding the perpetrator are well drawn. There are different clever bits of detection and some believably ordinary police work that ultimately solve the crime. Lew works well with the FBI and state agencies she needs to call in and I enjoyed all the fly fishing parts, even though I have never fished in my life. Expertise of any kind is always interesting. As a reader, you also feel as though you’ve made a virtual visit to Loon Lake. This is a really well done series. — Robin Agnew