Cougar Claw

This is one of those thrillers that opens with a full view of the crime—in this case, two men ambushing a Savage, Minnesota CEO and attacking him with real cougar claws and teeth. There was recently a sighting of one of the big cats in the area, so it’s easy for investigators to believe the businessman became a meal. The local sheriff who’s running for re-election has no objection to chalking the death up to wildlife rather than crime stats….but then Sam Rivers shows up to complicate his life. Sam, special agent for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, doesn’t care for bureaucracy or the sheriff, and persists in finding out what’s behind this event that looks suspicious to his expert eye. Just what looks off to Sam will teach readers about things like the structure of all cats’ paws, which parts of a person a cougar would eat, what one of the creature’s teeth embedded in a person’s spine should look like, and other juicy tidbits. In the human world that Sam deals with somewhat reluctantly, things are more complicated, as his investigation is a tangled web of an about-to-be-very-rich widow, her nosy neighbor, a journalist who’s also Sam’s love interest, and always that blustery sheriff. Sam Rivers is akin to Emily Littlejohn’s character Gemma Monroe—a likable, steadfast investigator whose work takes readers into the outdoors and the crimes it hides. He’s a character worth getting to know.