Woods cop mysteries

In a brilliant debut to a thrilling series, Grady Service gets news that his nemesis, the head of an incestuous clan of poachers, is to be released from prison. But something even more sinister is afoot in the Mosquito Wilderness. Service must call upon his every reserve to track, stalk, and capture the "ice hunter."

For more on Joseph Heywood and the Woods Cop Mysteries, visit the author's website.

The discovery of skeletal remains sheds troubling light on an eighty-year-old cold case involving racism, gold, and murder. Combine that with a present-day ecoterrorist, a thriving crystal meth industry, and Service's particular brand of grizzled, sexually tense, and action-packed police work for a hardboiled crime novel of the great outdoors.

Every fall in northern Michigan brings a spate of dogman sightings. A radio DJ's invention, the dogman was created as an attention-getting joke. But millions of Michiganders believe in angels and vampires, werewolves, Bigfoot . . . and the dogman. Late summer, the horribly mutilated bodies of two Native American girls are found in a tent in a remote campground in the Huron Mountains. Grady Service, who wants nothing more than to return to patrolling...

"In the eleventh Woods Cop Mystery, Conservation Officer Grady Service is on unpaid suspension but continues to voluntarily patrol the Mosquito Wilderness. He senses political shenanigans-an old foe lurking in the shadows and it seems someone wants to illegally commercialize the Mosquito. Grady realizes if he doesn't stop it, the wilderness will be destroyed. The tight story unfolds like a poker game, with one side bluffing and raising, while the...

The eccentric characters of the Michigan wilderness populate Heywood's short stories (some only six pages long) with sparkling dialogue among challenging situations. The game wardens in these stories must contend with poachers, drug smugglers, violent deaths-- and the trials of being women in a wilderness law enforcement fraternity.