Rehder, Ben - BUCK FEVER

[LJ Roberts]

BUCK FEVER – G+ - if it’s your kind of thing

Rehder, Ben – 1^st book

County game warden John Marlin and Sheriff Herbert Mackey lock horns when two dumb-and-dumber poachers accidentally shoot another idiotic guy wearing a deer costume. The poachers also wound a particularly rambunctious big-antlered buck, which just happens to be Marlin's former pet. Elsewhere in the county, a body is discovered beneath a shoddily repaired bridge, and a slick, drug-dealing Colombian comes looking for a game, ranch-owning, crooked lobbyist.

This was a hard book for me to rate. It is very well written with interesting characters (a couple of the sadly pathetic) and I can see why it was selected as a Publishers Weekly Best Mystery of the Year, but I think it would help if you were a hunter.