When Lake Superior spits out a dead Chicago mobster on the shores of sleepy Porcupine County in Michigan's isolated Upper Peninsula, Deputy Stephen Martinez, who makes an appealing laid-back philosopher-detective, gets on the case in Kisor's delightful encore to Season's Revenge
(2003). Another corpse takes Martinez to the second victim's workplace, an old copper mine that now thrives as an underground greenhouse for high-quality seedlings and pharmaceutical plants. When the clumsy pursuit of a couple of gun-toting drunks in the woods leads to a human skeleton, Martinez enlists the aid of his town-historian girlfriend to identify the century-old remains as those of a murdered miner. While the tension rarely rises above a low setting, sharp-witted dialogue, rustic ambience and intriguing, character-driven tangents will keep readers turning the pages. Kisor is the book editor and literary columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times
. (Dec.)
