ISBN 0-88801-240-3
$16.95 Cdn/$14.95 U.S.
5-1/2 x 8-1/2, 340 pages

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Karen Dudley

The Holbrook gnomes are going astray but no one suspects them of murder.

Robyn, a field biologist, is on an extended sick leave, nursing the broken arm and a shattered leg she acquired searching for spotted owls in a BC logging town (Hoot to Kill ). Bored out of her skull, Robyn surreptitiously follows her coworkers (including the attractive but elusive Kelt Roberson) to their latest job site so she can watch the action from her bright red motorized cart. Woodrow Consultants is in Holbrook to clean up an abandoned chemical plant, a veritable toxic soup. Almost immediately, Robyn finds harmless diversion trying to solve the mystery of local garden gnome-nappings.

But an eerie pall is cast over the town’s gnomes when one turns up alongside the brutally murdered body of Richard DeSantis. Robyn’s holiday suddenly becomes a working vacation as she delves deeper into the poisons—human and otherwise—in and around the town. Robyn suffers a personal crisis as she begins to suspect everyone: her own surrogate mother, bird-watching tourists, a psychiatric patient with a history of violence, angry townsfolk shooting at Woodrow workers, and an international conspiracy. Physically vulnerable and emotionally torn, Robyn must find the killer—or killers—before the body count (both flesh and ceramic) grows.