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Gerritsen's heroines head to Wyoming

By Tess Gerritsen

ICE COLD

By Tess Gerritsen

Ballantine Books, 2010

322 pages, $26.00

ISBN 978-0-345-51548-3

Best-selling Camden author Tess Gerritsen may well be Maine's best known mystery maven, noted for her gritty, well-crafted and suspenseful thrillers. ICE COLD is her 13th mystery novel, following the truly creepy story THE KEEPSAKE (Ballantine, 2008).

With her own background as a physician, Gerritsen predictably adds large graphic doses of medicine and science to her stories, giving the plots gory realism nicely balanced with strong characters, smart dialogue and carefully drawn plot lines.

Gerritsen's two favorite characters are strong, independent women: Dr. Maura Isles, a tough Boston medical examiner and Detective Jane Rizzoli, a savvy Boston homicide cop.

Here, Maura goes missing in the wintry mountains of Wyoming after attending a medical conference. Trapped in the abandoned village of Kingdom Come, she and her naive companions wonder where all the people went and who is now stalking them.

Later, when their car is found wrecked and burned with four dead bodies inside, Jane and Maura's friends think Maura is dead, but the homicide detective has some doubts. Something about that accident just doesn't add up. Jane joins the Wyoming investigation, and discovers links to a strange and violent polygamous cult, an obscure East Coast financial group bankrolling some obvious illegal payoffs and a cowboy culture where everybody goes around well-armed and eager to shoot.

Add an elderly cattle rancher with an itchy trigger-finger, a teenage boy expelled from the cult and now an accused cop-killer, a social worker with an anti-cult agenda and a dark secret, gunmen in a black SUV, a mass grave containing 41 bodies, a too helpful deputy and a Catholic priest caught in his own dilemma, and Gerritsen has once again produced a riveting mystery loaded with clever clues, action and very surprising plot twists.

MAINE: AN EXPLORER'S GUIDE

By Christina Tree and Nancy English

The Countryman Press, 2010

720 pages, $21.95

ISBN 978-0-88150-907-6

Among all the other tourist guidebooks of Maine, this one, MAINE: AN EXPLORER'S GUIDE, may be the most detailed and comprehensive. This venerable travel guide has been around for nearly 30 years, with this the latest of 15 revisions.

Travel writer Christina Tree has also co-authored guides to Vermont, New Hampshire and western Massachusetts. Her co-author here is Nancy English, the restaurant critic for the Maine Sunday Telegram newspaper and author of CHOW MAINE, a restaurant guide. Together, these women offer a very user-friendly guide to nearly everything in Maine from places to go and things to do, to places to stay, eat and shop.

Organized into seven geographic regions, the book highlights local history, provides directions, travel tips and contact information, along with excellent maps, photos and an alphabetical listing from Acadians and llamas to traffic laws and windjammers. Sidebars include information on topics like puffin and whale watching, Indian culture and railroads.

As expected, the usual tourist destinations are prominently featured: Kennebunkport, Portland, Camden and Bar Harbor, but the most interesting sections cover the less well-known and much less-frequently visited areas of the state, like the mid-coast islands, far Down East, Washington County, the moutains, river valleys and North Woods.

The authors tell candidly who still fries their doughnuts in lard, which animal park has "a number of unhappy looking exotic animals," which Kennebunkport restaurant will charge your credit card if you don't show up and who hosts the Fishermen's Festival.

Learn, too, who owns a chocolate moose weighing 1700 pounds, where you can find the "Tipsy Leprechaun," which mid-coast island prohibits smoking and camping (and don't pick the flowers!), as well as how you can join the Maine Black Fly Breeder's Association and where you can mine for semi-precious gems.

-- Bill Bushnell lives and writes in Harpswell.