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From
the Ontonagon Herald, October 26, 2003
Would
You Believe Murder by
Bear?
"Season's Revenge": A Delightful Gift in the Mail
By Dave Distel
Once in awhile, amid the credit card applications, bills and
Victoria’s
Secret catalogs, something nice lands in the mailbox.
I discovered just such a treasure not long ago, when Henry
Kisor’s
novel “Season’s Revenge” arrived
unsolicited and, therefore,
unexpected. I had heard nothing about it, but a book is a book and I
opened this one to see what it was all about. Had time permitted, I
would have finished it without putting it down.
 I got all the way to the
third
sentence before the words “Upper
Peninsula” jumped out at me and it was not too long
thereafter that I
realized that the fictional Porcupine City and Porcupine County were,
indeed, Ontonagon and Ontonagon County. This, I realized, could be very
interesting.
I eventually discovered a reference to Hobbs’ Bar, Grill and
Northwoods
Museum. Gee, I wonder what that might be. And an episode at the Cackle
Shack, where tourists (and locals) gather to eat chicken, slurp ice
cream cones and, by the way, watch bears graze at the dumpster. Gee, I
wonder where that might be.
Kisor, the book editor and literary columnist for the Chicago
Sun-Times, had obviously spent some time hereabouts. And he had been a
U.P. regular, he later told me, for quite a few years. He was just a
whole lot more tuned into the nuances of the area than the average
“tourist” marveling at the Lake Superior shoreline,
using up a
half-a-roll of film on the splendors of the Lake of the Clouds or
gawking at the color-lined roadways of October.
The man has a feel for the area.
What really hooked me, however, was the story itself. It is a most
fascinating and imaginative tale of murder. I have said that the
writing of “true-crime” is more like
paint-by-numbers, albeit you have
to make sure you stay inside the lines to present a true and clear
picture. The plot Kisor concocted from the recesses of his cranium was
a mind-blower of a story.
It begins with the discovery of a body in the Wolverine Mountain
Wilderness State Park. Gee, I wonder what that might be. This was a
camper who had apparently gotten a bit sloppy with his bacon grease and
been killed by a rogue bear. This was also a veteran outdoorsman who
didn’t figure to get that sloppy. And this was also one of
Porcupine
County’s most affluent and powerful citizens.
A tragic accident? Sure looked like it. And that’s the way it
would
have stayed. The case was closed.
Except for a Porcupine County deputy named Steve Martinez, a Dakota
Indian adopted and raised by a Caucasian family. Suspicions ate at him.
He could not “officially” investigate because there
was no case to
officially investigate.
Could a bear possibly be “trained” in some way to
carry out such a
deed? Martinez would probe where he should not have been probing and
investigate what he should not have been investigating. Things he saw
and learned began to build up in his mind.
All the while, he was developing a love interest. This was Ginny
Fitzgerald, the director of the Porcupine County Historical Society.
She was the only person with whom he could share his suspicions.
The web got more tangled with the discovery of a
“suicide” and
seemingly errant shots directed at Martinez himself. The deputy became
more and more certain that he was right, except for one minor detail.
He had no viable suspects. Rich land barons tend to develop enemies,
but who hated the victim enough to want him dead?
It would come to Martinez, or he would stumble upon it, in the weirdest
of circumstances, but we’re certainly not going to go there
now.
We can presume from the ending that Steve and Ginny will live happily
ever after, but you actually get to the ending hoping there will
someday be more...It sets up perfectly for a sequel.or more. It would
make for a good movie...or even a television series.
In the meantime, Henry, stop and say hello when you are in these parts
again.
Copyright 2003 Ontonagon Herald |
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