Deerslayer: A Pete Brady Mystery

The author, who also writes as M. K. Shuman ( Deep Kill ), concocts a circuitous mystery solved in an improbable manner by small-town Louisiana publisher Pete Brady. When Dwayne Elkins is killed while Brady, Sheriff Matt Garitty and his son Scott are deer hunting, Scott appears to be the guilty one, since only his gun was fired before the body was found. Garitty, who trained both Brady and Scott, can't believe the boy mistook Elkins for a deer but can't investigate a case in which the evidence so forcefully points to his son. Instead he asks Brady to nose around. Winner of a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting before he bought the weekly Troy Parish Express , Brady takes to the hunt. Soon afterward Elkins's study is ransacked, and a girl living in a nearby trailer park is killed; Brady is certain the events are related to Elkins's death. The clues he assembles and his discovery of the culprit will strain the credulity of even the most lenient mystery reader. (Nov.)