Noontime Follies

May 11, 2015
Burgeoning agri-economic growth and a spate of petty crimes concern the residents of Rutherford, Minn., in Gunn’s smart, twisty sixth Jake Hines mystery (after 2014’s Red Man Down). Apparently, persons unknown are clearly upset with the efforts of some of Rutherford’s new scientific R&D industries to genetically alter crops. And they’re not above a little nighttime breaking and entering to lodge their complaints. They jimmy locks and take nothing, but they do leave nasty messages. It may just be misdemeanor fun, until one of Rutherford’s industrial scientists ends up dead. But as Jake, the affable head of Rutherford’s detective division, narrates his department’s crime-solving steps—outsmarting lying witnesses and navigating the inevitable blind alleys—the town and its cops come alive on the page. Gunn expertly blends the timely, headline-grabbing topics of GMO foods and climate change with credible characters and situations. Agent: Jane Chelius, Jane Chelius Literary Agency.

March 23, 2009
Det. Sarah Burke gets a lesson about Arizona’s struggling construction industry and family greed in Gunn’s taut second police procedural to feature the Tucson cop (after 2008’s Cool in Tucson
).
When someone shoots arts patron Eloise Henderson to death along with her one-night stand, an ex-con-turned-stagehand, the obvious suspect is Eloise’s husband, with whom she’d been having marital problems. As Sarah and her team begin to investigate Eloise’s past, other possible suspects emerge. Meanwhile, caterer Zachariah Cristofou, prompted by society and theater gadfly “Madge,” concocts a scheme to frame a naïve stagehand, Pauly Eckhardt, for the murders, a plot that goes awry when one of the principals starts spilling the beans. Fans of Cool in Tucson
will enjoy catching up with Sarah’s earnest efforts to make a real family for Denny, the daughter of her drug-addicted sister, and her relationship with fellow cop Will Dietz.

July 1, 2015

Jake Hines, now happily married, enjoys his brown-bag lunch with a colleague discussing cases, such as a recent string of break-ins at high-tech start-ups. When one of the business founders is murdered, does this mean the culprits who left threatening messages have escalated their tactics, or is something else afoot? The tenth entry (after Eleven Little Piggies) in this successful police procedural set in Minnesota features the usual cast of characters.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 15, 2015
A rash of break-ins at 14 of the cutting-edge science start-ups that have been flocking to small-town Rutherford, Minnesota, puzzles chief of detectives Jake Hines. Nothing is taken during these crimes, but warnings at the scenes proclaim the dangers of genetically modified foods and threaten retribution. Then Nathan Gold, a scientist doing crop experimentation for SmartSeeds, is found dead at his desk with no sign of trauma; another scientist is shot at; and a woman is injured at another business. Hines and his force work long hours to determine how these crimes are related, with Gold's apparent murder complicated by what is learned about his family. The Jake Hines series is marked by character developmentof Hines, his family (he's now the dad of 18-month-old Ben), and his colleaguesand this tenth entry continues in that vein, with intriguing hints about the relationship between two of Hines' detectives. The ecoterrorism/GMO theme is up-to-the-minute current, while the motive for murder is timeless. Another solid police procedural from the reliable Gunn.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)