Claire Watkins Series

Then the quiet was broken. The baby reached up a hand and jerked at the tablecloth. A spoon hit her on the head, and she started to cry. Bertha Schuler stuck her head out the door and called that dinner was ready. The clock in the hallway struck the half hour. And the first shot was fired. The unsolved murders at a remote Wisconsin farmhouse half a century ago have receded into time. But one deranged man will do anything to make sure that all of Pepin County remembers that bloody day. The world was out of balance. It had been so for nearly fifty years. Only he could see it. Only he could change it. When a quantity of dangerous pesticides is stolen from the local co-op, Deputy Sheriff Claire Watkins is called in to investigate. The thief has left one bizarre clue: the finger bone of a child long dead. The pesticides soon reappear with devastating effect—in flowerbeds, in animal feed, and in a fatal concoction at a Fourth of July picnic. Each time, a tiny human bone is left at the scene. With the help of Harold Peabody, the quirky, aging editor of the Durand Daily, Claire unravels the secrets of the past, leading her to a pair of young lovers, a man enraged over his mother's death, an obsessive recluse, and the deputy who first discovered the corpses of the Schuler family Claire desperately races against time to find the madman before he uses the lethal pesticide again. But he won't be stopped. Not until he gets what he wants. The truth must be told. Or more will die. The flowers and the birds were only the beginning. . . . Written with Mary Logue's trademark power and compassion, Bone Harvest is a bold, brilliant thriller that carries the reader deep into the heart of the Wisconsin bluffs country, into the hearts of its people—and to a startling conclusion.

Fall comes to Pepin County with a vengeance as Deputy Sheriff Claire Watkins confronts a new evil festering beneath the placid surface of the Wisconsin farm community. A refugee from the Twin Cities, Claire has slowly adapted to small-town life-especially now that she loves and lives with Rich Haggard. But in this rural area, other folks are dangerously restless. One is Daniel Reiner, a wealthy part-time resident who's been buying up too much land-at least as far as the locals are concerned. Another is gambling addict and aging gold digger Patty Jo Tilde, who recently married a widower twenty years her senior. Patty is itching to inherit her husband's property, sell it to Reiner, and leave the countryside behind. The only stumbling block-her husband must die. Add to the mix a suspicious goat-herding daughter-in-law and a wounded elk, and things quickly reach a boiling point. As Claire Watkins delves deeper into the mystery, she believes she's uncovered a deadly history of lies, deceit, arson, and poison. Her problem is to prove it-and then she learns what happened to Patty Jo's last husband. . . . Evoking the strong community values and the natural beauty of the Mississippi River Valley, this new Claire Watkins novel is Logue's most exciting yet. Poison Heart is a riveting tale of those who live off the land-and those who end up six feet under it.