Red Jacket: A Lute Bapcat Mystery by Joseph Heywood
ASIN: B00MJD7H1Q
This is the first volume in a series of historical mysteries starring Lute Bapcat, a newly-minted game warden in far northern Michigan just before WorldWar I. The location is what caught my attention, because ancestors of mine lived and worked on the Keweenaw Peninsula in the U.P. (Upper Peninsula). They were tin miners from Corwall who came to work in the copper mines of Michigan.
This book was interesting for the local flavor and descriptions of the mining life. I really like the main characters, too, Lute and his sidekick Zakov, a Russian with too much education and a mysterious past. However, there were a LOT of co-stars in this drama, and keeping their identities separate was difficult at times. It was convoluted and difficult to keep the characters straight.
The book plodded quite a bit and the plot took a long time to resolve, with lots of red herrings (or so it seemed) and dead ends. I was confused a lot, which is uncomfortable, and the ending seemed rushed, as so many books do. I may try the next book in the series to see if these problems improved.
