When Good Men Die: A Sam Dawson Mystery

Horn deftly weaves past and present in his unusual second mystery featuring photographer Sam Dawson (after 2013’s The Pumpkin Eater). Since Sam’s recent coffee table book of images of dead trees didn’t sell, his publisher wants him to return to his specialty, “pictorials of obscure cemeteries.” That directive takes him to Deep Lake, Minn., where he finds an old-age home, Whispering Pines Care Center, next to a graveyard. His efforts to expand his portfolio by photographing the residents are resisted strenuously by Aimee Pond, a nurse who suspects he’s out to scam her charges. She views Sam a bit more favorably after he’s kind to one of her patients, Hans Gottlieb, who wanders into the artist’s motor home. Aimee soon has a more serious problem to deal with when another patient, Sophie Mickelson, is smothered in her bed. Chapters filling in Hans’s backstory, starting with his experiences as a carnival wrestling champ in the 1930s, allow the reader to figure out Horn’s clever plan to fit all the pieces together. [em](BookLife) [/em]