Customer Reviews

Dead Creek (Loon Lake Fishing Mystery)

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Just about every one of the 4000 residents of Lake Loon knows that retired dentist, Doctor Osborne loves to take his boat out and go fishing. He especially enjoys catching muskie, a Wisconsin delicacy. Just about the only thing, the sexagenarian loves more than fishing, is helping Chief of Police Lew Ferris solve crime. Perhaps he just has a crush on his favorite law enforcement official.

He is unaware that when he has the chance to catch some muskie in an isolated locale, he will soon be working with his favorite police officer. In a small inlet of the lake, Osborne finds a wired cage containing the bodies of four adults. No one knows who the victims are except that they are wealthy out of towners who disappeared form an upscale retreat. Lew and Osborne will need three parts perseverance and seven parts luck to solve this impossible case.

People who enjoy fishing will want to read DEAD CREEK, but those fans of a well-drawn regional police procedural will also want to read this novel. All the subplots smoothly return to the main theme and there are plenty of suspects to keep the audience guessing about what is going on and who is the mastermind behind the mysterious events. With this fine novel, Victoria Houston will hook readers and make them seek her previous stories.

Harriet Klausne

This is not your typical small-town mystery featuring a cozy fishing village. Retired dentist Paul Osborne has a habit of coming accross dead bodies, and this time it's a doozy. Four dead bodies are left frozen in a cage, with one displaying rather disturbing gender parts. Paul would rather not have much to do with this, but when asked by the lovely Police Chief Lew Ferris to help out, he cannot refuse. Paul is aided by his trusty young friend Ray, who comes from a family of lawyers and doctors yet chooses to live off the land poaching and tracking.

Long lost family secrets, the effects of pollution, a strip bar, and a loon-calling contest all come into play as the three try to track down just what happened in Loon Lake...P>This is a great series with wonderful characters. I look forward to following them in the forthcoming novels.

When I finished reading, Dead Creek, I went out a bought a second copy for a friend. This second novel in Victoria Houston's, Loon Lake Fishing Mystery Series is a keeper. Definitely a can't put down thriller. The characters are unforgetable. I enjoyed Ms Houston's first book, Dead Angler, and anxiously awaited this release. WOW! What an incredible few hours of absolute reading enjoyment.. Felt like I had stepped back in with a group of friends. You won't be disappointed with your visit to Loon Lake. It's always an exciting adventure. Can hardly wait for book three to be released in 2001. I know it will be worth the wait.

Great murder mystery based in Loon Lake, WI. It is based around a retired dentist Dr. Osbourne, his friend Ray Pradt and Lew, the local law enforcement. If you enjoy muder mysteries, the outdoors, and eclectic people, then this is a read to enjoy!

Something about this authors charters just makes her books incredible. You can see these people without even closing your eyes.This author just has a gift that (to me)makes every page an adventure with people I feel I live next door to.

Grabs you from the first page. I was unable to put this one down. Many twists and turns that will keep you guessing. If you read any of the "Dead" series read this one.

Dead Creek is the second in the Loon Lake Fishing Mysteries series and really...who would have thought fishing could be even remotely interesting to read about! Go figure! We rejoin the original cast of main characters (Chief Ferries, Doc Osborn, Ray Pradt). The story starts out innocuously enough with Doc Osborn out fishing muskies in his favorite (and secret) fishing hole when he discovers four bodies submerged there. Once again Doc Osborn finds himself an integral part of an interesting and twisted murder investigation that takes them through murder, theft, revenge, and even an ecological disaster to solve this most recent crime. I love that Houston can take what could be a pretty cut and dry police procedural and gives it a nice small town flavor that is wonderfully engaging and just plain fun to read. I love that these are older characters than one usually finds in this type of book (over 50 for the most part), it's definitely nice to see people over 50 being the hero, instead of it always being young, (emphasis usually on physical attractiveness of characters) 25 year old...don't get me wrong, those are fun too...but you don't get middle aged all the way up to retired people in the murder-mystery/thriller genre too often anymore. Nice change of pace. I also like that these are REAL characters, they have flaws, faults and real life problems that they must also deal with while solving the mystery...it really helps to cement that feeling that these aren't just characters, they're real people.

My only complaint about this follow up novel is the author uses some of the exact same descriptive paragraphs from the first book (with regards to the main characters and some of the place descriptions). I assume the repetition so that readers do not have to have read the first book to follow this one, but reading them more than once was a little "old" and if it continues, it may turn me off reading any more of her work. Aside from that...a really great read, quick and entertaining. I managed to figure this one out way before it ended...but still enjoyed reading it!

Doc Osborne, retired dentis, is out scouting for the big muskie he has been after for the last few seasons. He wants to take Chief of Police Lew Ferris out with him, see if she's as good with a lure as she is at fly-fishing. What he finds is not nearly as much fun: four frozen corpses in a metal cage. They aren't locals, but Doc recognizes his own dental work, which helps ID at least one of the bodies.

Lew is out of town, which leaves any preliminary investigation in the not-so-capable hands of John Sloan. Ray Pradt, local character, has had his run-ins with Sloan; this makes the whole situation a little more complicated, because Ray knows the backwoods like nobody else, and is good friends with Doc Osborne. An uneasy truce is maintained until Chief Ferris gets back into town.

The investigation takes an unexpected turn when the dental work Doc recognizes belongs to a guy from way out of town, and that guy's corpse, at first glance, looks to be that of a woman. Which brings in some odd connections with some environmental research that's been going on near Dead Creek, where the paper mill used to dump all their waste. Seems the flora and fauna have been mutating - hyperfeminine aspects in males, the reverse in females of the species.

Houston is very good at taking what, at first glance, seems to be a highly improbably set-up and making it work. She's adept at taking that "what if?" question just about as far as it can go, and then making it all seem reasonable. I'm not sure if what she writes about in DEAD CREEK is technically possible, but it is a reasonable extrapolation from the environmental issues being looked at by the scholarly types in the book. Scary, but not out of the realm of possibility.

She is also very good at characterization. This is the second book in her LOON LAKE series (the first is DEAD ANGLER), and we find out more of the back story of Doc's life, and Ray Pradt's life. Not so much about Chief Ferris, but there are several more books after these two in the series, so perhaps that information comes later. Ray Pradt is a wonderful secondary character; the neighbor with the junky trailor who ruins the property values and dresses funny but is just the kind of guy one wants if ever there is any kind of problem . . . he can kill it, fix it, find it, track it, and knows way more than he lets on about any number of things.

Houston's sense of place is also a pleasure to read. It is probably not that difficult to write about the pleasures of living in a small town in northern Wisconsin; she makes the not-so-wonderful aspects of that same life believable without taking the edge off the bood parts. You know that Doc loves it, with all its flaws, and that he truly doesn't understand how anyone can possible feel any other way.

DEAD CREEK is a very good second novel by a writer who knows her territory and can share that knowledge without bogging down in deadly details. I recommend DEAD CREEK and Victoria Houston to anyone who likes Steve Hamilton or Kent Kreuger for character and place, anyone who likes an amateur sleuth with a police connection, and anyone who wants to stretch their "cozy" reading habits just a little bit.

In the 2nd book in the Loon Lake Fishing mystery series, Doc Osborne is happily fishing for Muskie one day when he stumbles onto the gruesomely preserved bodies of 4 adults that had been killed and dumped in the icy water. Originally, it appeared that he had found three men and one woman, but with closer examination, it is disovered that the one that they assumed was a female is actually a malformed male. The men were frozen and dumped in the lake, apparently with the hopes that no one would find their murdered bodies in the hidden area that Doc used as his private fishing hole. And with police chief Lew Ferris out of town, Doc quickly becomes deputized again, and starts working the murder along with long-time friend and neighbor, Ray Pradt. Ray uses his contacts with an environmental investigation into the effects of the now defunct Cantrell paper mill to investigate the possible cause of the malformed body. It seems that there are some toxins in and around Dead Creek that have been causing problems with the reproductive systems of the wildlife, and Ray has been hired to assist in the study. When he is found injured after a trip out to the area of Dead Creek, a sinister plot of theft, murder, and revenge starts to unfold. Doc, Lew (having returned early from her trip), and Ray must work quickly to uncover the murderer, and save themselves from an untimely death at the hands of this sinister killer.

Varying between a police procedural and a cozy, this wonderful mystery had quite a bite, and kept me wondering what might happen up until the very end. I loved the twists and turns in the book...even though I could see early on how several items tied together. I was kept awake long after I had finished this book, and was haunted by the images of the graphic standoff with the killer. I also enjoyed the budding romance between Lew and Doc, and am eager to read the next book in the series, and to visit Loon Lake again very soon.

The first book in the series is called "Dead Angler". Enjoy!

Houston does an excellent job of getting the reader into the characters of her story. Although you do not have to be a flyfisher, she blends in the craft of fly fishing into the plot and drama of the storyline in a manner that flyfishers can relive their own past experiences on the water. Hope Ms. Houston continues the life of the characters in her books with more sequels.