Death of a Dyer

April 22, 2013
Farmer Will Rees, the hero of Kuhn’s well-constructed second mystery set in late 18th-century Maine (after 2012’s A Simple Murder), is dumbfounded to learn that childhood friend Nate Bowditch, one of the county’s richest landowners, was beaten to death with a scutching knife—and that Bowditch’s 17-year-old son, Richard, is believed responsible. George Potter, the old friend and neighbor of Rees’s who conveys this tragic news, persuades the reluctant Rees, who broke with the victim years before, to leave his farm work and visit Bowditch’s widow that very day. Richard implicates himself by fleeing the area, but Rees, who developed his sleuthing skills while serving with the Continental Army, soon finds others with motives for the murder. Kuhns does a good job integrating the political developments of the time into the storyline, especially the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, and delivers a logical and surprising solution to this traditional whodunit.