April 1, 2021
"Kick her out." "Barry her." Heidi Kick, sheriff of Bad Axe County, WI, sees Barry Rickreiner's campaign signs for sheriff all over the county, even stuck in her yard. Her seven-year-old twin sons see them, too, and one is acting out. That's the least of her problems. Heidi suspects she might be pregnant. She doesn't trust the man appointed interim deputy sheriff. There's a heat wave with temperatures over 100 degrees, and she's sending her deputies for welfare checks. A priest is harping about homeless men who disappeared and were killed. Sheriff Kick's discovery of an Amish-appearing man dying in an outhouse on booby-trapped property escalates all the trouble. Then the former editor of the local newspaper disappears after corresponding with a radical environmentalist. Sheriff Kick and her understaffed team have more problems than any small force should have to handle. VERDICT The third "Bad Axe County" mystery, following Dead Man Dancing, is a grim, atmospheric story set in a bleak territory. Fans of Tricia Fields's gritty Josie Gray mysteries or Chris Harding Thornton's dark Pickard County Atlas may appreciate the bizarre cast of characters and the harsh setting of this book.--Lesa Holstine, Evansville Vanderburgh P.L., IN
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April 5, 2021
In Galligan’s suspenseful third novel set in Wisconsin’s Bad Axe County (after 2020’s Dead Man Dancing), Sheriff Heidi Kick, who’s running for reelection against Barry Rickreiner, receives an anonymous email from “Oppo” offering her opposition research on her rival. The death years before of Rickreiner’s then girlfriend, Kim Maybee, who ingested buttermilk laced with pesticide, was ruled a suicide, but was in fact a homicide, according to Oppo. At the time, Rickreiner was an alcoholic and addict, and his recovery and redemption story is key to his unremittingly negative campaign. Meanwhile, Kick has to investigate the death of a homeless man who was buried alive. That murder may be linked to a string of disappearances of homeless men, which a priest unsuccessfully tried to get law enforcement interested in. Kick’s efforts are aided by the local newspaper editor, a political supporter who’s been threatened by an apparent crank. Readers will root for Kick as the action builds to a satisfyingly hard-edged denouement. Fans of gritty rural crime, such as Ace Atkins’s Quinn Colson series, will be enthralled. Agent: Joanna MacKenzie, Nelson Literary.
May 14, 2021
This third Bad Axe County novel starring Heidi Kick, sheriff of a tiny Wisconsin county, gets off to an unconventional start: the sheriff squatting on her lawn and urinating into a jar. The discovery of a body in a ditch gets the plot going (the victim appears to have been buried alive), and further murders follow, all during an oppressive heat wave. Heidi's investigation is slowed by the lack of help she receives from police and fire commissioners: she's busted them all for drunk driving. Further problems: Heidi's mother-in-law acts up. Her son is in trouble. A difficult reelection campaign looms. She may be pregnant--that's the point of the jar business. Heidi is resourceful, but she needs help this time and gets it from sacked newspaper editor Leroy Fanta, who finds a link to a local eccentric. Together, the pair push through a world of death and decay, pessimism and depression. An oddly compelling country noir in which a few good souls attempt to fight entropy.
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Starred review from April 15, 2021
Rural Wisconsin is darker than you might think in the third gripping mystery featuring a young woman sheriff. Sheriff Heidi Kick has seen murder victims before. Even in Wisconsin's Bad Axe County (or maybe especially there), people kill each other. But she's never before seen one who looks like he crawled back out of the grave. Besides a coat of dirt, this dead man has two gunshot wounds, one boot, one bare foot, and no name. That's also rare, since the sheriff knows almost everyone in her sparsely populated jurisdiction. As Heidi tries to find out who the man is and how he ended up dead in a ditch, Leroy "Grape" Fanta begins to suspect the stranger's death might be connected to a string of unhinged letters and calls he's received from someone who signs himself "FROM HELL HOLLOW." Leroy, a Vietnam vet, has served as the dedicated editor-in-chief of the town's newspaper for 43 years. But no more--he's been fired, and the paper's been turned into a shopper. Leroy and Heidi are friends who share a nemesis: Babette Rickreiner, a rich widow with a mean mouth and a dictator's personality. She bought Leroy's paper, and her spoiled, vicious son, Barry, is running against Heidi in the sheriff's election with all the cheap tricks he can muster. Heidi tries to ignore them and do her job. From the site where the murder victim was found, she follows a trail of empty beer cans to a remote farm where she finds a young woman, dressed in the plain clothing of the Amish, passed out drunk and an older man nearly dead in the outhouse. Things accelerate from there for both Heidi and Leroy. Heidi has worries at home, too. She and her good-guy husband, Harley, have three kids, and Taylor, one of their twin sons, is acting out in unusual and worrying ways. And Heidi just might be pregnant again. This is the third book in Galligan's series about Heidi, who has become a solidly engaging character amid a small-town swarm of strange folks. The plot is gritty and propulsive, the prose well crafted, the finale satisfyingly bizarre. Intriguing characters take a wild ride through backwoods Wisconsin in this irresistible mystery.
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