A man's bloated, naked body is found floating in Lake Pepin at about the same time that the wife of the town board commissioner is found dead in her home, apparently from a suicide. So begins Mary Logue's seventh Claire Watkins mystery novel. Watkins, deputy sheriff of Pepin County in northern Wisconsin, looks for clues and connections between the two deaths as this homey, "Murder, She Wrote"-type plot unfolds. While this novel does not have the sophistication of "CSI," Logue does a passable job of balancing backwoods forensics with good-old common sense; however, there are several twists that the reader will find unbelievable under the microscope of modern police procedure. Though the book is a somewhat simplistic mystery novel, Logue's style will keep readers interested and dare them to predict who-done-it. (Tom Hammer)
