Customer Reviews

Cache of Corpses

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Henry Kisor in his third book of a series takes great pride in the description of his setting for "Cache of Corpses", Porcupine County in the picturesque and bucolic Upper Peninsula of Michigan. His protagonist Deputy Sheriff Steve Martinez has both personal and professional issues which impact his existence. Martinez, a Lakota Indian by birth is considered an outsider despite living in Porcupine for more than 10 years, against a backdrop of a mostly Caucasian populace. His relationship with wealthy local widow Ginny Fitzgerald is being put to the test when she decides to adopt a 12 year old orphaned native American boy Tommy Standing Bear.

Martinez has plenty on his plate as he's unofficially assuming the job of Sheriff Eli Garrow. Garrow a deep rooted denizen of Porcupine City has taken an unauthorized sabbatical refusing to go back to work. Martinez was presently campaigning against Garrow for the sheriff's job in the upcoming local election.

With all the pressure on Martinez's head a spate of corpses have been turning up with alarming regularity in the territory under his jurisdiction. The corpses are medical cadavers but when one appears to be a homicide victim, the investigation goes into high gear.

This rash of cadavers we learn is part of a game originated in an internet chat room that combines the macabre with the latest in global positioning devices in a weird scavenger type hunt.

Kisor's plot is creative and he endows a sense of plausibility to his characters especially Martinez who must juggle his personal problems which are becoming compounded by virtue of his investigation.

Once again Henry Kisor comes up with an inventive, nicely plotted story featuring his well-crafted protagonist, Deputy Steve Martinez. The pacing and tone are excellent. Kisor gives us another vivid, charming look at the remote Upper Peninsula of Michigan, not a place where one would expect dead bodies galore to start turning up.

Roger L. Conlee (author of "Counterclockwise" and "Every Shape, Every Shadow")

As the author of Peril on the Katy Trail researching information for a possible future novel set at 14 Mile Point near Ontonagon, MI I was surprised to find that another author had set the conclusion of his novel at that same location. So I obtained a copy of Cache of Corpses and also the first two novels in the series by Henry Kisor, Season's Revenge: A Christmas Mystery and A Venture Into Murder. My surprise evolved to pleasant.

I do not know if I will ever write a novel set in northern Michigan, but I do know that I thoroughly enjoy the novels in this mystery series by Henry Kisor. The characters are well developed and the stories are fascinating.

Cache of Corpses can stand alone if beginning to read there. However, I do recommend starting with Season's Revenge as the first in the series. The maturation of the main character is a classic.

I've now read the three books in this series. Each of them does a very good job inducing the reader to enjoy the context of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The first was good; the second better; this new one is even better. My conclusion about this book being the strongest -- and a good indication that the series will continue to improve -- is that the plot is the thickest and most interesting (in my view), there are no odd or predictable developments, and the overall package provides a fine mix of police procedural, local color, and characters you will care about. With that said, I think the reader who enjoys such books should start at the beginning but not be disappointed if the first two books are not perfect. Highly recommended.

When I recently remarked to a writer-friend who writes a mystery series based in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, "But you're the only one who writes about the U.P., right?," he gave me a long, meaningful gaze. You know, the kind of gaze that makes you realize you've just said something really *stoopid*. So I did some online researching. Yeah. I did say something *stoopid*.

I got a list of U.P. authors, a very long list, I might add, and among them was Henry Kisor. My writer-friend had recommended Kisor, so I browsed through some electronic versions of his books, and chose this one, Cache of Corpses. It is one of a series about a detective named Steve Martinez, a Lakota Sioux by birth, now living in the very small town called Porcupine City, in the area near the Porcupine Mountains of the U.P.

The story opens like this:

"It's in the Dying Room," Jenny Benson said, voice strained, ample chest heaving. "And it has no head."

Oh boy, I thought, coming in with a slam, and didn't wait a moment to add that stereotypical detective mystery bit with a heaving ample chest. Suppressing an eye roll (hard to read that way), I settled in for the read to see where it would take me.

After a bit of a clumsy start, I became genuinely interested in the story. Not my genre, even as I am a fan of most all things U.P., and it didn't have the delicious tang of humor I'd found in the Woods Cop series by Joe Heywood, but I appreciated the cast of northern wilderness characters and the mix of woods politics--detective Martinez is running for deputy sheriff at the time that a string of murders takes place, leaving a cache of headless, handless corpses wrapped in plastic and hidden as if on scavenger hunt for a group of weird, sociopathic geocaching game-players.

Kisor does a good job of painting his characters in bright and memorable colors. The detective himself is a likeable person, as is his three-year woman friend Ginny, a tough but warm-hearted woman living in a log cabin and keeping her wealth quiet--northern folk don't necessarily respect monetary wealth.

Townspeople each enrich the portrait of the northern town and its history, as does the incumbent sheriff running against Martinez in the campaign. Perhaps Tommy, the young boy with a tragic childhood that Ginny wishes to adopt, comes off a bit flat and unbelievable, a little too perfect for a child emerging from a mess of alcoholic and now dead parents and a tangled foster system. But the mystery itself unfolds with increasing interest, winding through odd Internet chat rooms and big city brutes that think the tucked away northern wilderness is just the place to hide corpses. It's a fun if stomach-churning tale, and I'd pick up another book by this author to see how he solves the next one.

Henry Kisor is a retired Chicago Sun Times book editor and an author of several fiction and nonfiction books, spending his winters in Chicago and his summers in Ontonagon County, where the Porcupine Mountains are located.

A very good book with that incorporates one of my favorite hobbies (geocaching). The characters are interesting enough to care about, and the description of the setting can easily make you feel like you are there. My one complaint was the use of some language that was a bit rougher than necessary in parts. It doesn't dominate the story, but there are a couple scenes were it jumps out unexpected. Overall, I would recommend this book to any fan of mysteries or geocaching.

Okay. Here's the opening paragraph:

"'It's in the Dying Room,' Jenny Besonen said, voice strained, ample chest heaving. `And it has no head.'"

Yes, Deputy Sheriff Steve Two Crow Martinez is back. And fans of his previous adventures - "Season's Revenge" and "A Venture Into Murder" - should take note that this is the best of the three books. In other words, Kisor's books keep getting better. That is really saying something, considering how good the first two books in the series were.

This time around, Martinez (of Porcupine County, Michigan) is led to a headless/handless corpse which, as it turns out, has been embalmed. By this point, Martinez must have long-dismissed the myth that Porcupine county is a quiet place to live! But he probably doesn't suspect that this case will drop him into Internet Hell.

Oh, yes, he's also running for sheriff against his grumpy old boss...and caring for his girlfriend's foster son, an Ojibwa lad who promptly gets lost in the forest. Those two side issues aren't nearly as exciting as the central mystery...but they at least have the virtue of being connected by their effect on Martinez's thinking process.

Kisor has an easy, open style and a firm lock on what constitutes an actual mystery. And his sly jabs at how technology is often inferior to "the old ways" are both valid and amusing.

I start reading most mystery series primarily for their physical setting: cold northern areas, or favorite cities such as Boston and New Orleans. The best writers such as Lehane and Burke add a lot more to the location.

In this case, the writing is completely adequate, flowing along smoothly with no major highs or lows. There's a funny moment when the author makes fun of himself researching a mystery novel. But the real star of this series is the western UP and I doubt I'd be reading it otherwise.

If you enjoy the UP, you'll enjoy the series; if not, I think you'll probably find better reading choices.

Not a very good book. The plot is not believable. The ending is contrived. The main character is too good to be believed and the author uses every oportunity to slam the people he pruports to like, the residents of the UP in Michigan. It was an effort to finsh.

Cache of Corpses is the third novel about Deputy Steve Martinez of Porcupine County in the Upper Penninsula of Michigan. For the third time Henry Kisor has captured the people and countryside giving them the respect and grace they deserve, while delivering a riveting story. Thanks for a great story.