Death Roe, by Joe Heywood
daverichey December 8th, 2008
TITLE: Death Roe
AUTHOR: Joe Heywood
PUBLISHER: The Lyons Press
DISTRIBUTOR: Globe Pequot Press, 246 Goose Lane, Guilford, CT 06437-0480
CONTACT: Globe Pequot Press, 246 Goose Lane, Guilford, CT 06437-0480
WEBSITE: Globe Pequot Press
WEBSITE: Authors Website
COST $24.95 + S/H; Hardcover book with dust jacket
This is the sixth book in Heywood’s highly acclaimed Woods Copy Mystery Series. The chief focus of each Woods Cop book is Grady Service, a hard-nosed, rawboned conservation officer and detective for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. Most of his earlier books have dealt with Service’s painstaking challenges to enforce fish & game laws in the Upper Peninsula, but not this time.
This book is a fictionalized account of a company contracted to harvest salmon and eggs at the state-owned weirs on Great Lakes tributaries where salmon run up-river to spawn in the fall. The weirs are manned by the contracted company, but all types of illegal shenanigans take place as the company bills for more fish than they harvest. And that’s just the tip of the ice berg.
A woman, employed by the company, tastes the eggs of harvested salmon and pronounces them acceptable for caviar. Soon the company is mixing New York salmon eggs, which contain Mirex, a deadly chemical, and those eggs are unsafe for human consumption. The contaminated eggs are added for “taste” to the Michigan eggs, which were fit for eating. The woman dies from the poison, and piece by piece, Grady Service and a female conservation officer begin to learn more about this company and its corrupt ways of doing business.
They uncover bribes, kickbacks, and other illegalities that compromise some state employees. The web of deceit and crime spreads to a host of Upper Peninsula Yoopers, officers of the New York state fish and wildlife agency, and then federal game wardens and IRS agents enter the case.
The book has 346 pages of hard-hitting, explosive twisting and turning plot shifts, and Heywood manages to keep the reader hooked on this fast-paced novel.
Not only is Service a target for the criminal enterprise operating on Michigan’s spawning streams, but his work on this rapidly developing case makes him a target for some of the DNR’s highest ranking personnel. In true Woods Cop fashion, he doesn’t slow down, and continues to forge ahead until the outlaw operation is put out of business.
This book has it all: page-turning suspense, a weird cast of characters who are just weird enough to be real-life people. The book moves along with crisp dialogue, fast-paced action, and some feelings for an aging officer who gets banged up a bit.
Heywood has a solid background in what goes on with Michigan conservation officers because he spends a great deal of time riding with officers, and this gives him a great feel for what the life of an officer is all about.
This is a good read, and like the other books in the Woods Cop series, it leaves the reader wanting another quick taste of what Heywood’s next book will be about, and that is always a major surprise.
