Ice Hunter: A Woods Cop Mystery

A fine novel with a great plot and penty of explanation on the Upper (Yooper Land) of Michigan. The Fish Cop fits the profile just right for a CO up there. He loves his job,his land and his few Women. All in all it was a great mystery and a lot of information on the land and people of our upper peninsular.

I've been a Bill Tapply fan for years and have probably read most everything he's written being 60. Ice Huner is up among the best.

I can't add much to Mr. Nuss' review: I started to read this series as a fan of Steve Hamilton and really became facinated with the nature settings and the characterization. I do think Heywood is better at the capsulized characters than the more extended ones: I found the women in the book particularly elusive as believable characters--but I loved Limpy and Honeypat and Scaffidi, and all the exotic backwoods populace captured in this novel. And as a long-time watcher of Michigan's political and economic climate as well as the various iterations of the Department of Natural Resources, I felt very at home with the various political struggles which are so much a part of this book.The Woods Cop series is a discovery I'm glad I made: I have the next installment ready and waiting to begin this afternoon.

Grady Service doesn't do well with people and he can't play political games. What he does is hunt down violators of fishing, hunting, dumping, and other regulations protecting the environment. His special love is the Mosquito Wilderness Tract, an unspoiled piece of land in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. When strange things start to happen in the Tract, Service launches into action.The strange things include arson, and murder. While murder is normally reserved for the county police, Service won't back down. Something strange is happening in his wilderness and the murder is only a symptom. But who would possibly have anything to gain? Service intends to find out.What makes ICE HUNTER work is Service. Author Joseph Heywood has created a complex character with enough flaws to make him approachable, and enough weaknesses to make him endearing despite his pathological fear of women, commitment, dogs, and taking it easy.What makes ICE HUNTER work is watching Service. While the plot is well constructed and interesting, it is simply the stage across wich Service acts. It will be interesting to see if Service can keep his edge in future novels as he overcomes his fear of both women and dogs. I'll look forward to finding out.

Ice Hunter - by Joseph HeywoodBoth Joseph Heywood and Steve Hamilton ("A Cold Day in Paradise", "Winter of the Wolf Moon") are striving to do for Michigan's remote upper peninsula what Tony Hillerman did for the Navajo Nation. And if their initial efforts are valid harbingers, each is on course to succeed in bringing this colorful region to life for many readers who will never actually set foot there.Both Hamilton and Heywood have selected the UP as the backdrop for their respective mystery series. Hamilton has just released the third volume of his series, titled "The Hunting Wind", while "Ice Hunter" is the first of a promised series from Heywood. Hamilton's protagonist, Alec McKnight, is a retired Detroit cop turned tourist camp operator and private investigator, while Grady Service, the star of Heywood's new "Woods Cop" series, is a second generation Michigan State Conservation Officer or CO - what was known as a game warden when I was growing up. But Grady Service is a game warden you definitely don't want to cross. He forsakes prospects of a professional hockey career, after nearly killing a highly touted rival in a college match, then sharpens his considerable capabilities serving a tour in Vietnam as a recon Marine, before following his venerated CO father's footsteps into Michigan's elite arboreal law enforcement corps.When we join Grady twenty years on the job have already elapsed and, now middle aged, he is known not only for his uncanny tracking skills, but also for levels of dedication and tenacity that place him in the middle of whatever trouble Michigan's north woods have to offer. He has a reputation for doing things his way rather than that of the big-business-aligned state governor (possibly a just little too similar to Michigan's current real world governor, Republican John Engler).Like Hillerman, both Hamilton and Heywood use the quasi-exotic settings of their stories to full advantage as a source of both specific real world locations and a cornucopia of colorful characters - of the eccentric individualist variety. In Heywood's case these supporting roles run the gamut from an incestuous backwoods "ridgerunner" poacher, to a retired mafia capo turned ecologist, a hockey obsessed university geology professor, and a highly resourceful female fire warden who sets her personal sights on Service while helping him unravel a murderous conspiracy bent on despoiling a pristine wilderness tract that both have sworn to protect. Heywood does a nice job of recreating the distinct dialect of the UP (Think of the motion picture "Fargo" for a not too dissimilar parallel patois.) While Heywood is routinely more explicit with profanity and sexual innuendo than Tony Hillerman ever was, this adds some authentic grittiness to the story, and I believe most fans of Hillerman (and certainly those of Hamilton) would be very pleased with this novel.Along the way, during this fast moving and extremely readable narrative, CO Service handles all manner of