Buried in Stone

Fans of Eric Wright's Charlie Salter series will quickly warm to his new detective, Mel Pickett, a Toronto homicide cop just retired to the rustic town of Larch River. It's a plain place for a plain man and his life consists of simple pleasures: his hand-built log cabin, carpentry work for the community theater, and cautious courtship of café proprietor Charlotte Mercer.

Lothario Timmy Marlow is found in the woods, shot and nearly unrecognizable. Gossip suffests an outraged husband could be the killer. The police chief (and only cop) is too close to the victim, the despised brother of his girlfriend. The provincial police have picked up a convenient suspect, as unpopular as Marlow. But Mel can't resist looking deeper, uncovering a criminal past more sinister than imagined.