The Aluminum Hatch

Death Downriver

Link Pickett's tourist season ended before it had even begun. The fishing guide met his grisly end as he canoed down the roiling waters of northern Michigan's Borchard River and was nearly decapitated by a wire strung across the river.

Most of Ossning has decided that Verlyn Kelso -- Link's fierce business rival -- is the killer. Department of Natural Resources agent Mercy Virdon, who happens to be Kelso's ex-wife, thinks otherwise. So does their teenage son, Kit. And so, in fact, does Mercy's lover, an ex-Detroit newspaperman, especially when he discovers a second victim, shot with a crossbow.

Soon they're both up to their neoprene chest waders in a mystery as turbulent as the spring thaw's churning river waters -- and twice as deadly.