Overview
When a local prosecuting attorney is killed by long-range rifle while dining at an exclusive Granite Creek, Colorado, restaurant, it seems obvious that a vengeful criminal is to blame. But orthodontist Manfred Blinkoe was sitting ten feet away and he insists that he was the intended victim. In fact, he claims that just before the shot was fired, he saw his doppelganger—an eerie lookalike—as he has in the past just before a near-death experience. Terrified, Blinkoe hires Charlie Moon to find the lookalike, but before Charlie can get anywhere, Blinkoe is murdered for real.
As usual in Doss's clever, intricately drawn mysteries, the cagey Charlie Moon and his Ute shaman Aunt Daisy share the spotlight.
Synopsis
James D. Doss's latest engrossing mystery marks the return of Charlie Moon, tribal investigator on Colorado's Ute reservation, whose sleuthing skills get some unlikely help from his Aunt Daisy Perika's shamanistic intuition.
TROUBLE SPREADS ITS WINGS
Dr. Manfred Blinkoe is one orthodontist with a very checkered past. So when a fellow diner at Cedar Creek's poshest restaurant drops dead from an unseen assailant's bullet, he can't help thinking that he was the intended target. Desperate for help, he turns to the one local who's up to the job: renowned tribal investigator Charlie Moon.
AND A KILLER COMES TO ROOST
Charlie already has his hands full with two cattle ranches to run, ornery Aunt Daisy's wanderings in the spirit world, and his sparring matches with the alluring FBI agent Lila Mae McTeague. Now he's got an eccentric client with more money than sense and too many enemies—at least one of whom is willing to resort to explosive measures to settle an old score.
"Highly entertaining...big money, big gambles, and a surprise ending
will keep readers turning the pages."
—Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly
In Doss's highly entertaining 10th Charlie Moon mystery (after 2004's The Witch's Tongue), the rancher and Ute tribal investigator takes on his most unlovable client, orthodontist Manfred Wilhelm Blinkoe. The "mildly eccentric" Blinkoe insists that an assassin was aiming at him instead of the actual murder victim, a local attorney, shot at an upscale Granite Creek, Colo., restaurant. Tribal shaman Daisy Perika, Moon's crotchety aunt, becomes a target even as her otherworldly visions point her to more deaths connected with Charlie's client. When Blinkoe's boat is blown to smithereens, his beautiful blonde wife is naturally a suspect, but her husband's past and present life give plenty of other people motive for wanting him dead. Big money, big gambles and a surprise ending will keep readers turning the pages. Agent, Richard Henshaw. (Oct.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.