Woods Cop Mysteries [#1-9] by Joseph Heywood (ePUB+)

In a brilliant debut to a thrilling series, Grady Service gets news that his nemesis, the head of an incestuous clan of poachers, is to be released from prison. But something even more sinister is afoot in the Mosquito Wilderness. Service must call upon his every reserve to track, stalk, and capture the "ice hunter." For more on Joseph Heywood and the Woods Cop Mysteries, visit the author's website.



A string of protests by animal-rights activists appear to have culminated in a double murder at a wolf lab, which releases into the wild a rare animal: a blue wolf. To the Ojibwa a blue wolf means luck; but if captured or killed, Armageddon. Grady Service is in a race against time as an elusive poachers’ ring chooses its final target: the blue wolf.



Once again, Grady Service, the hard-boiled Conservation Officer of this superb series set in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, has a weird case on his hands. Strange things are happening to the black bear population. Grady Service can't pin this phenomenon to anyone or anything until a Korea-born professor from Michigan Tech is murdered by cyanide-laced figs and two freeze-dried bear gall bladders are found among the figs. Service is certain that bear poachers are at work, killing U.P. bears to fuel the Asian market for traditional medicines. The animal parts market is second only to drugs in global profitability: it's highly organized and the practitioners are ruthless and dangerous. Grady's nemesis, Michigan's governor, is ending his final term as governor, but has cut budgets so severely, that there are not enough conservation officers to cover the state. Service finds himself filling in for colleagues, chasing illusive poachers who leave little evidence, and wrestling with the usual cast of eccentric and entertaining characters. And in this novel, there is a new twist in Grady's personal life: He meets a sixteen-year-old son he never knew he had. Sexy, suspenseful, and full of action, perfect dialog, and unforgettable characters, Chasing a Blond Moon will confirm Heywood as one of the finest of his day.



We go back in time twenty-five years to meet Service as a young conservation officer. Still fresh from Vietnam, but on home turf, Service has been tapped for an unusual assignment that threatens to be his last. Full of outrageous characters and the verisimilitude the series is known for, Running Dark is a wild and riveting ride.



A serial killer is knocking off America’s best conservation officers—and Service learns he is next on the list. The FBI brings him on the case, but Service is also out for blood. The killer has murdered his girlfriend, Maridly Nantz, and his son, Walter. Service must navigate the terrain of his own grief as well as the killer’s twisted mind.



In the sixth title in the successful Woods Cop Mystery series, another suspenseful who-done-it finds Grady Service with an unexpectedly complex, truly rotten, and important case on his hands. This time tainted eggs are showing up in caviar and Service must expose a ring of corruption in state government and perhaps within his own beloved DNR, one that could lead him all the way to the top. Making enemies at every level of the state, Service rousts out the people on the take. Can he get to the source of the contaminated eggs and prove it? Pitting corporate greed against the health of the general public isn't something Service takes lightly. He doesn't rest until there has been full exposure in a case that takes him from the wilds of the Upper Peninsula to the jungles of the state capital, into the maw of the Ukrainian mafia in New York City and onto distant beaches of Central America.



In the seventh installment in the acclaimed Woods Cop Mystery series, another suspenseful crime noir finds Grady Service, a detective in the Upper Peninsula for Michigan's Department of Natural Resources, back in action. The discovery of skeletal remains sheds troubling light on an eighty-year-old cold case involving racism, gold, and murder. Combine that with a present-day ecoterrorist whose guerrilla tactics—including a gruesome trap called a "wolf tree"—make Rambo look like a cub scout; a thriving crystal meth industry; and Service's particular brand of grizzled, sexually tense, and action-packed police work. Death lurks behind every tree, under every rock, and within every raging river in the most action-packed Woods Cop Mystery yet.



Retail

Late spring, 2007. Michigan in economic freefall, state budgets being slashed, politics reduced to nastiness, state jobs being erased, and personnel furloughed without pay. Grady Service, detective for the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) in the Upper Peninsula, watches as his colleagues leave the department one by one, leaving him without his old support system. Upon being asked by an old friend to look into unspecified problems his son is facing on the shores of Lake Superior, Service has no idea how complicated his life is about to become. All he knows is that the situation involves something his friend calls “bleeding sand”—and that his new partner, Conservation Officer Donna “Jingo” Sedge, is the oddest young officer he’s ever met, both jealous and suspicious of his role in what she views as her case on her turf. Service and Sedge become immersed in a centuries-old mystery they must solve in order to deal with the current and more pressing problem: people willfully looting and tearing up a Native American archaeological site. As past and present intersect, summer lightning ignites a forest fire in northern Luce County, and the blaze quickly covers 20,000 acres. The story moves at breakneck speed as Service, nearing three decades as a Woods Cop, finds that expectations seem to be changing on all fronts, personal and professional, and he is not certain he can live up to them.

#8.5

Hard Ground is a treasure chest of stories for lovers of the outdoors, fans of smart crime fiction, and, of course, the legions of Joseph Heywood fans. Featuring the game-warden colleagues of Woods Cop star Grady Service, the tales in this collection follow the men and women patrolling Michigan's wilds as they encounter everything from poachers determined to defend their kills with deadly resistance to drug pushers selling their wares at an Elvis Convention camping retreat. There are search-and-rescue operations, a rookie game warden's first day on the job, and much, much more. With Heywood's trademark ability to capture the eccentric characters of the Upper Peninsula, his wonderful ear for dialogue, and his vivid descriptions of hunting, fishing, and outdoorsmanship, these twenty-plus stories will delight Heywood fans and entice any reader who loves stories about the great outdoors or law-and-order. As an added bonus, one story features Woods Cop protagonist Grady Service...



Every fall in northern Michigan brings a spate of dogman sightings. A radio DJ’s invention, the dogman was created as an attention-getting joke. But millions of Michiganders believe in angels and vampires, werewolves, Bigfoot . . . and the dogman. Late summer, the horribly mutilated bodies of two Native American girls are found in a tent in a remote campground in the Huron Mountains. Grady Service, who wants nothing more than to return to patrolling his beloved Mosquito Wilderness, is called into the case. Strange animal tracks are found, mayhem ensues, a bloody trail of victims begins to accumulate, and the governor, in a political panic, and on her way out of office, orders Grady to hunt down and eliminate the killer--on her office’s dime. Grady Service does not believe in Easter bunnies, Santa Claus, or dogmen, and the "monster" hunt that unfolds in Killing a Cold One builds to a violent finish in some of the Upper Peninsula’s harshest and deadliest terrain. Joseph Heywood's legendary woods cop is called upon to use all of his investigative skills to sort fantasy from reality in order to do what the governor wants.