Present Tense

A seasoned fisherman of hardy Norwegian stock, Nels Bertelsen is found dead on his boat, apparently from a bee sting to which he was highly allergic. No one questions the tragic randomness of this accident except John McIntire, a retired military intelligence officer and now the new constable of St. Adele, Michigan, the hometown to which he has returned after thirty years abroad.

McIntire suspects that someone actually places the bees in the victim's clothing and replaced his vial of antidote with poison. Bertelsen was a hot-tempered man -- but had he picked one fight too many? As McIntire probes deeper into the victims life, a teenage girl is found strangled to death but her body disappears before McIntire arrives on the scene. The no-nonsense soldier gets busy reacquainting himself with Michigan's Upper Peninsula as well as the folks he grew up with . . . and discovers some buried secrets worth killing for.

Genre: Mystery