Skin River

September 1, 2004
With an eye for gritty detail and a predilection for metaphor, Sidor paints a morbid picture of deviance and death in the small Wisconsin town of Gunnar in his fast-paced crime debut. Since removing himself from the armed robbery business a year and a half earlier, 52-year-old Buddy Bayes has been attempting to straighten out his life. He keeps busy by running his own tavern and eyeing Margot, the homely young mother living upstairs. But just as things are beginning to look up, he stumbles across the severed hand of a missing girl in a nearby river. Soon he's back in the sheriff's radar and is forced to hide his past and protect his loved ones as carnage ensues. That's not easy to do when a former partner in crime wants him dead, one of his friends might be the sadistic murderer, and he has an uncanny knack for finding bodies. The pace accelerates as the killer, devilishly named Goatskinner, acts out his tortured fantasies, getting closer to Buddy with every slice of his knife. Sidor doesn't stray far from formula, but Buddy's futile attempts to repair his life give the story extra depth, and the salty prose ("She has an ugly smile, he thinks, like an open cut") and clever narration will keep readers hooked.

August 1, 2004
When a psychotic almost kills the single-mother/waitress who lives above his rural Wisconsin tavern, Buddy Bayes goes ballistic. Buddy recently found the severed hand of a different victim, and because of his own former criminal life in Chicago, he feels both attacks may be a message for him. So he secretly returns to the Windy City to see if there's still a contract on him, while back in Wisconsin the serial killer continues to operate with chilling immunity. Deft descriptions, slick prose, and growing tension mark this first novel. Recommended for collections where patrons prefer dark, hard-boiled crime novels. Sidor lives near Chicago.

Copyright 2004 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2004
You can't get creepier than this opening scene: a search party combs a section of woods in northern Wisconsin looking for a missing college girl while a serial killer--with the college girl trapped in the back of his truck--sits calmly smoking a joint a mere 10 feet away from the searchers. Sidor's debut novel maintains the tension throughout as the serial killer continues to thwart and taunt investigators. The hero, Buddy Bayes, is a moving target for both the killer and the cops. Bayes runs a tavern in small-town Wisconsin, a kind of hideout from his past. When Bayes finds the hand of the college girl next to the Skin River, he moves from local eccentric to suspect (for the police) and convenient fall guy (for the killer). Sidor sets this classic prey-and-predator story in a North Woods landscape laden with hunting associations. Exquisitely plotted, with a well-realized main character.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2004, American Library Association.)