Internet Book Watch
In his ninth Carl Wilcox mystery, Harold Adams shows he has what it takes to write a good sordid, but low-key, mystery set on theborders of Wisconsin and Minnesota on the St. Croix river.

Carl Wilcox, some time sign painter and sometime detective, has just married Hazel, the woman of his dreams. They are on their dream honeymoon, camping on the banks of the St. Croix river, eating campfire meals and making leisurely love inside of their tent. Wilcox is a solid rock of a man, who enjoys a good woman, a fishing line, and can tell when he is being lied to.

On the first night of Carl and Hazel's honeymoon, a shot rings out, followed by a scream. Carl goes out of the tent to investigate, and drags a newly dead unidentified body off of the railroad tracks before an oncoming train destroys any chance at detection. But it is the granddaughter of the farmer living in the house closest to the cliff the body fell from that becomes the center of the story...and the mystery:

"It was a quarter to noon when a Model A Ford driven by Cole Bacon appeared and angle-parked in front of city hall. A young blond, sleek as a show cat, stepped out, casually glanced our way, closed the car door firmly, and walked inside alone.

Well,' said Hazel softly, isn't she something?'"

Adams is a master of the small-town permutations. He makes the reader feel right at home by getting to the pulse of 1930's America in the Midwest. He's not afraid to describe the vegetable gardens, the lean of the houses, or the buzzing of insects. His attention to minutia creates a slower-paced and thoroughly enjoyable palette of life as we would all secretly like it to be. Even murder takes on an entirely different dimension when seen through the eyes of Adams' Carl Wilcox. Somehow the reader knows everything is going to be all right and that Carl and Hazel will win.