250 pages or less
Worthwhile reads to fit busy student schedules

-- Kristin Johnson, Literary Critic

Page-turning prose offers escape from troubled times
Fiction
Poison Heart
By: Mary Logue
Publisher: Ballantine Books, 233 pages, hardcover $23.95, July 2005.
First Thoughts: Well-crafted suspense in charming setting where even the natural landscape becomes a character.

Poison Heart is the fifth Claire Watkins mystery by local author Mary Logue. The second book in this series, Dark Coulee, won Logue a Minnesota Book Award in 2000.

At the start of the series, deputy sheriff Claire Watkins, formerly a Minneapolis police officer, has moved to Fort St. Antoine, Wisconsin. In this small town in the Mississippi River Valley, she hopes to raise her daughter Meg in a more peaceful setting. But she finds that even in the country, one cannot escape those with a penchant for murder.

In Poison Heart, gold-digger Patty Jo Tilde revels as her aging husband suffers a stroke. She waits hours before calling an ambulance, the delay of which seals his fate. And then, she waits for him to die so she can cash-in. But who would suspect this sixty-year-old woman of anything so callous?

This mystery is not a whodunit. It is, instead, a how-can-you-prove-it. How can Claire Watkins make the charges stick?

Relentless in her efforts, Claire sets out to show that Patty Jo is no grieving widow. But when Patty Jo sees the attention she’s getting, our detective had better watch out because Patty Jo isn’t just a murderer. She’s a woman who thinks she is untouchable—and she’ll do whatever it takes to keep Watkins out of her way.

Throw in an arsonist, a wounded elk, and an outsider buying up all the local land he can get his hands on and a very combustible situation develops. Amid the murder and arson mysteries, we see residents butting heads as new land ownership and generations of tradition come to blows.

The rural setting is fueled with character as Logue weaves natural detail of the landscape throughout her prose: “Claire drove down along the Chippewa and then cut up through the backwaters to Pepin. Once a great blue heron had lifted off from the slough and flown right across the road. She had barely avoided hitting it. The size of the bird had stunned her. For a moment, it had completely filled her windshield.”

Poison Heart, as well as the other books in her series, kept me turning pages well into the night. Logue’s genius is in her suspenseful piecing of puzzles, perfect pace and well-developed characterization. Readers will also enjoy the developing relationship between Watkins and her beau, Rich Haggard. The couple falls in love as the series progresses.

In addition to the Claire Watkins mysteries, Logue has published numerous other books, including award-winning poetry (Meticulous Attachment is her latest), nonfiction and children’s books. Currently she is coauthoring a young adult mystery series with husband, Pete Hautman (Godless, National Book Award winner). The first book in the series, Snatched, will be published by Putnam in 2006. The couple divides their time between their homes in Minnesota and the Wisconsin bluff country, which is the setting for the Claire Watkins series.

You can find out more about Mary Logue and her books and appearances at her Web site: http://www.petehautman.com/marylogue.html.

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