Carnage aplenty in Interlake whodunit

A private eye shotgunned in a field of sunflowers, a Mountie blunt-instrumented from behind on a Lake Winnipeg beach, a strong swimmer found floating far from shore, a shootout at the stereotypical friendly farm kitchen table — carnage among the murderous rural folk brings sergeant Roxanne Calloway back early from mat leave.

It has something to do with the disappearance of a lifeguard escaping her strict religious parents, a ne’er-do-well family maybe using their vegetable truck to run drugs or traffic young women, a former bureaucrat and suspected hands-on misogynist likely up to no good, shady siblings and shifty cousins galore, and parenting tips on taking a baby to the OK Corral.

After a disappointing try doing a Manitoba Miss Marple, Winnipeg author Raye Anderson returns to her earlier success with her fifth blood-drenched Interlake police procedural Had A Great Fall (Signature Editions, 272 pages, $18), a nifty whodunit that will do wonders for tourism in the Whiteshell.

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Mary Russell and husband Sherlock Holmes have just returned to their country home when a heretofore-unmentioned rogueish Uncle Jacob Russell appears, on the scent of the Irish crown jewels purloined in 1907.

Holmes had solved the caper, but was ignored and his report buried by the vast powers of the Empire, including his spymaster brother Mycroft, because a public resolution would have revealed the sexual orientation of a group of men that may have even included (clutch your pearls) the Palace.

The 19th entertaining romp featuring the indefatigable Mary Russell, Laurie R. King’s Knave of Diamonds (Bantam, 320 pages, $40) needs a tad more background on Irish history.

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When the letter carrier driving the longest route in the U.S. goes missing in the desert, Wyoming sheriff Walt Longmire goes undercover on her 494-kilometre section — even using a strange new device he’s never before dared touch, a cellphone.

Could her vanishing have anything to do with a nomadic cult awaiting an alien spaceship while giving off vibes of being killers and fraudsters ripping off elderly believers for their money? Really? Has any desert cult ever been harmless in a murder mystery?

Craig Johnson’s Return to Sender (Viking, 336 pages, $40) is the 21st entry in an entertaining series that ignores Walt is about 85 now.

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Deluded diva-ish former TV star Miranda Abbott languishes in backwoods Happy Rock, Ore., co-owning the mystery bookstore with sort-of-ex-husband Edgar, when a writers’ festival brings a bevy of ferociously over-the-top authors to town — could murder (or murders) soon follow?

The third in a series, Ian Ferguson and Will Ferguson’s Killer on the First Page (HarperCollins, 304 pages, $25) might have been a joke wearing thin in lesser hands, but remains bitingly hilarious and a crafty whodunit, with umpteen locked-room capers.

There’s even a Manitoba reference, and a proposed TV series about an ace Quebec cop named Knowlton leGnash that elbows-up readers will get, while the book lovingly skewers small-town newspapers. A good time had by all, except maybe the murder victims.

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Minneapolis millionaire private eye Rushmore McKenzie sleuths for a young paleontologist who made an amazing discovery of an ankylosaurus skeleton — only to have dinosaur rustlers steal the skull and skedaddle for the Canadian border.

McKenzie and wife Nina and a huge contingent of characters, mainly crooked, or academics behaving abominably, provide their usual highly entertaining whodunit.

David Housewright’s Them Bones (Minotaur Books, 320 pages, $39) spends time in Toronto, Regina and Manitoba, specifically Glenboro, with helpful advice on how to sneak across the border from Highway 12 South.

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Retired Free Press reporter Nick Martin once visited a friend with a cottage in Matlock, though somehow survived to tell the tale.