Cache of Corpses

Porcupine City is a peaceful little town in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, the kind where everyone knows everyone else and good-natured gossip is a prime source of entertainment. The residents enjoy a quiet life far removed from the comings and goings of larger cities. It’s certainly the last place anyone would think of using as the backdrop for a high-tech, high-thrill treasure hunt.Until the first gruesome clue is found: a headless corpse wrapped in plastic.Deputy Steve Martinez—Lakota Sioux by birth, Porcupine City native by association—has investigated many crimes, but none more surprising than the case before him now. When clues at the first crime scene lead to a second headless corpse, Steve realizes this is someone’s twisted idea of a game. And these events couldn’t come at a worse time: the election for county sheriff is fast approaching and the sudden rash of bodies is just the sort of ammunition Steve’s opponent is all too eager to use against him. Luckily Steve’s longtime love, beautiful redhead Ginny Fitzgerald, is still by his side, but even that relationship becomes strained as Steve searches for a way to connect with her foster son, Tommy.This is Steve’s toughest investigation yet—one that spreads from secret Internet chatrooms into Chicago’s seedy underbelly, and even takes to the air above Porcupine County. It will take all of Deputy Martinez’s patience and cunning to catch a sociopath who’s after the next forbidden rush. It might also force him to face some unpleasant truths about the locals he has sworn to protect.“Henry Kisor writes with compassion and humor about the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, a place that’s cash-poor but rich in character. . . . Kisor develops the mystery with expertise while working the political race for some nice laughs. But he really hooks us with his whimsy-free descriptions of life—from wedding dances and town-hall debates to the dead-end future seen in the eyes of a high-school dropout—in this beautiful but economically depressed region,” wrote Marilyn Stasio in her New York Times Book Review mystery column.Roger Ebert, the Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic, wrote: “Add Henry Kisor’s deputy sheriff Steve Martinez to the list with Lew Archer and Travis McGee. . . . Kisor’s riveting plot weaves together computer gamesmanship, gruesome forensics, local politics, wary romance and inherited Indian instincts into a terrifically readable thriller . . . Couldn’t put it down.”