Lake Crescent: A Creature X Mystery

Canadian author Dupuis’s lively sequel to 2020’s Roanoke Ridge takes Laura Reagan, a cryptozoological investigator, and her TV documentary crew to Robert’s Arm, Newfoundland, in search of Cressie, a legendary giant eel. At first, a fisherman catches a large eel on the lake where Cressie has supposedly been spotted, but a necropsy shows it’s an ordinary conger eel. Later, Laura and crew pull up a human skeleton wrapped in a tarpaulin, a grisly discovery possibly related to a snowmobile accident from decades earlier in which two lovers presumably died. When the RCMP tried to retrieve the bodies from the water, they were driven away by giant eels, or so the story goes. Laura winds up plunging into the cold case, and suddenly bad things start happening to people, like the local Cressie expert, who’s seriously injured in a car crash. Dupuis nicely captures the feeling of Robert’s Arm with its quirky residents and slowly builds tension as what begins as a fish tale develops into a gripping murder mystery. With luck, Laura and friends will be back soon. Agent: Kelvin Kong, K2 Agency (Canada). (Aug.)