The Huckleberry Murders

August 9, 2010
In McManus's amusing, folksy fourth Bo Tully mystery (after 2009's The Double-Jack Murders), the 43-year-old Blight County, Idaho, sheriff is headed for his favorite remote spot to pick huckleberries when five frantic women inform him that they've spotted bodies nearby. Tully finds three young men, apparently farm laborers, lying by a huckleberry patch, each shot in the back of the head. Tully has his hands full with the rare triple murder as well as the disappearance of rancher Orville Poulson, whose so-called caretaker, Ray Crockett, has entrenched himself on Poulson's property. Meanwhile, various women need the sheriff's attentions, including putative psychic Etta Gorsich, deputy Daisy Quinn, FBI agent Angela Phelps, and nurse Scarlett O'Ryan. Tully once again proves an unorthodox and effective lawman, while McManus's storytelling, be it about a haunted lake or a modern mountain man, never flags.