Bad Moon Rising by John Galligan

 

First Lines: August 7, 2019. La Crosse, Wisconsin. Jump.

 

Finding the body of a young homeless man takes Sheriff Heidi Kick's mind off the nasty reelection campaign her opponent is waging against her, but the discovery can't take her mind off the deadly heat wave that has her section of remote, rural Wisconsin in its grip, nor is it powerful enough to make her forget all the troubles she's having with her young children. 

As her family problems become known, rumors begin to circulate, but Heidi has more dead bodies to cope with. Only newspaperman Leroy Fanta seems to offer any help. He thinks that her case may be tied to a man who's been writing deranged letters to the editor for years. Fanta's heart and liver may be packing it in, but he sets out one more time to see if he can help find Heidi a lead in her case.

~

I sometimes wonder how on earth Sheriff Heidi Kick can manage to stagger from one disaster to another as fraught as her personal life is. I sometimes wonder how she can think Bad Axe County is such a great place to live with all the sordid crimes that take place and all the out-and-out slimy, unhinged people who live there. I sometimes wonder why I like this series so much when those sordid crimes and unhinged people make me want to jump in a hot shower, stick my fingers in my ears, and singsong LA LA LA LA at the top of my voice. But you see, author John Galligan makes it all work, and I enjoyed Bad Moon Rising every bit as much as I did the first two books in the series.

I think my liking for this series has everything to do with its main character, Sheriff Heidi Kick. She's got the smarts, the intuition, and the determination to get the job done each and every time, and that's saying a lot because of her family. At least in this third book, her husband Harley behaved himself. No, it was her wonderful mother-in-law trying to make her life as miserable as possible this time around, bless her. Believe me, this extra grief is not necessary because I think she's got some of the most contentious children in all of crime fiction. But not contentious in the "let me lock 'em in the basement and throw away the key" way. These poor kids have very real problems that the entire family must decipher and learn to deal with, and it just makes me want to hug them all and pitch in to help.

Galligan's stories are always fast-paced and addictive, and no matter how gross the bad guys are, there's something ultimately satisfying in watching them come to justice. Yep. Once justice is served, I want to send dear mother-in-law on an around-the-world cruise she can't refuse, send Heidi and Harley out for a perfect just-the-two-of-them weekend, and babysit their kids.

Now... when a reader gets that involved with the characters, it has a lot to say about a series, doesn't it? Bring on the fourth book!

 

Bad Moon Rising by John Galligan

eISBN: 9781982166557

Atria Books © 2021

eBook, 334 pages

 

Police Procedural, #3 Bad Axe County mystery

Rating: A-

Source: Net Galley

Dead Man Dancing by John Galligan

 

First Line: As she watched the shivering band set up to play the farmers market at the corner of Kickapoo and Main, Bad Axe County sheriff Heidi Kick found herself counting days again.

 

Bad Axe County, Wisconsin, is gearing up for Sheriff Heidi Kick's favorite time of year: the Syttende Mai Festival celebrating the area's Scandinavian heritage. It's been a rough time for the sheriff; her husband is extremely vocal about the hours she works, and her seven-year-old daughter, Opie (Ophelia), is being just as vocal about a personal matter that has both parents concerned.

But Sheriff Heidi Kick has just discovered that something is deeply wrong in her county, and no one is more determined than she to make this area a safe place to live. A migrant worker is found savagely beaten, and a beloved member of the local oom-pah band is murdered. As Heidi investigates, she finds a secret world of cage fighting, White Nationalists congregating... for what?... and then she's faced with a choice that no woman would ever want to face.

This is going to be a memorable Syttende Mai Festival, to say the least.

~

In Dead Man Dancing, John Galligan has once again found the perfect mix of characters, setting, story, and action to keep me absorbed from first page to last. These harder-edged Bad Axe County books show how no part of the country is safe from crime-- even rural areas with rugged and remote terrain. In this second book, readers are confronted with White Nationalists and the resulting rhetoric these people like to spout as well as the senseless hate crimes that follow them. 

 

Dead Man Dancing isn't always an easy book to read. White Nationalists can make my blood pressure spike faster than almost anything else, but Galligan's characters and story-telling ability are so good that I had to keep reading to find out how everything would be resolved.

 

Now about these characters... Sheriff Heidi Kick has a new deputy from Texas who's slowly teaching her Spanish. I'm looking forward to seeing more of him in future books. On the surface, Heidi's husband, Harley, seems to be the usual spouse who hates sharing his partner with the demands of law enforcement, but readers get to see him in a different light in this book. He is not a two-dimensional man. Neither are his and Heidi's reactions to the demands of their daughter, Opie, and that's another situation I'm looking forward to seeing move along in the next book. 

 

Even secondary characters have lives of their own in Dead Man Dancing. Some residents show us how some people can live their lives wearing blinders while others show us how-- after being kicked over and over again while they're down-- they can make one bad decision after another. The real question for these people is-- will they always make the wrong choice? 

 

One of my favorite quotes in the book came when Heidi-- almost dead on her feet from exhaustion-- is told by her dispatcher to go home and get some rest. Heidi's response? "You know what happens if I go home? As soon as I get there, right about the time I get this uniform off, you call me." This is just one of the many reasons why I was never cut out for a life in law enforcement, and it was good to see the sheriff spell it out so bluntly and truthfully.

 

There are so many reasons to like this book, and one of them is how skillfully Galligan weaves area history into the narrative. This part of Wisconsin had former slaves move in, and one of them was known for building round barns. Not only was this bit of history fascinating but it added depth to both the story and one of Galligan's characters. 

 

John Galligan's Bad Axe County mysteries may tackle uncomfortable subjects, but his story-telling abilities and the characters he populates the county with will always keep me coming back for more. I've encountered few law enforcement officers as dedicated as Heidi Kick to keeping their jurisdictions safe, and that's just the sort of character I like to read about.

Dead Man Dancing by John Galligan

eISBN: 9781982110758

Atria Books © 2020

eBook, 304 pages

 

Police Procedural, #2 Bad Axe County mystery

Rating: A

Source: Net Galley

Bad Axe County by John Galligan

First Lines: Whistling Straits Golf Course, The American Club, Kohler, WI. Afternoon, July 9, 2004. The clammy hand of state representative Cyrus Johnsrud (R-Portage) has released her elbow and is drifting down her spine, stopping to savor each vertebra through the fabric of her gown.

 

Fifteen years ago, Heidi White was eighteen and the reigning Wisconsin Dairy Queen, dodging groping male hands and delivering her message all across the state. The world was her oyster and she had all sorts of plans... until the night that her parents were murdered. The police claimed it was murder suicide, but Heidi knows better. Unfortunately, no one will listen to her. Then followed some dark years when Heidi was her own worst enemy.

But she's found her calling. After her brilliant closing of a case, the married-with-three-kids Heidi Kick is the interim sheriff-- the first female sheriff in Wisconsin. Now she's trying to do her job while working with the corrupt previous sheriff's cronies whose constant derisive calls of "Dairy Queen" make her grind her teeth.

As a deadly ice storm heads for Bad Axe County, Heidi is on the trail of a missing teenage girl, and Pepper Greengrass's trail leads Heidi to backwoods stag parties, deserted dairy farms, and a salvage yard that has its own long-buried secret. As if her job weren't hard enough, she soon realizes that someone is planting clues for her to find, clues that lead to the local baseball team where her husband is coach and former star player. This new sheriff has a lot of work ahead of her if she's going to separate fact from fiction and find the missing girl in time.

~

I have a weakness for mysteries with strong female lead characters and ones set in areas with which I am not familiar. Bad Axe County was a natural for me to pick up because it has both. "This is the Bad Axe. This is coulees. Where did you grow up?" Heidi asks someone. "Somewhere else," the driver said. "That's why you don't get it." The Bad Axe is a part of Wisconsin that's set apart, that has its own rules, its own problems. Drugs, human trafficking... as Heidi lists all the criminal activities in her county, she wonders why she decided to raise a family there, and you can't blame her. But her ties to the area are strong, and she's committed to making it a safe place for everyone who lives there.

The cast of bad guys is seemingly endless in Bad Axe County, and it's not so much a matter of whodunit but of which-one-dunit. After a few chapters, readers will want to pull up their sleeves, put on their sturdiest butt-kicking boots, and help Heidi clean the place up. But as strong as the mystery is, as strong as the sense of place is, the reason why this book became one of my Best Reads of 2021 is its marvelous cast of characters. I won't even waste any time on the characters readers will love to hate, I'm skipping right on to the list of Good Guys. Heidi Kick is smart, intuitive, and determined. Fortunately, she has two people in the sheriff's office who have her back: Officer Yttri, and the night dispatcher, Denise Halverson. Denise and Heidi have their daily "inoculations," Denise telling Heidi one horrible sexist joke after another, the reason behind it being that, when they are faced with the jokes from the jerks they're forced to work with, those "funnies" will have lost their power to inflict damage.

Then there are the younger members of the cast. Pepper Greengrass, missing and in terrible danger, has had a tough life, and her mantra "Nothing you do can hurt me" has the power to break a reader's heart. As far as I was concerned, Pepper and Heidi shared center stage. Heidi's five-year-old daughter, Ophelia "Opie", is a little gem. Much wiser than her years, she's going to be a force to be reckoned with when she's older. Heidi, Denise, Pepper, and Opie are prime illustrations of Heidi's comment, "Emotion makes us stronger. It's something men don't get."

Heidi cares with all her heart and soul, and after reading Bad Axe County, I'm going to be following her from one book to the next as she does her best to clean up her territory. Come join me.

Bad Axe County by John Galligan

ISBN: 9781982110710

Atria Books © 2019

Paperback, 336 pages

Police Procedural, #1 Bad Axe County mystery

Rating: A+

Source: Purchased from Book Outlet.