To Darkness and To Death
Julia Spencer-Fleming
(Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
2005 St. Martin's Minotaur
ISBN: 0312334850

A missing woman, an assault & a murder halt the acquisition by a conservation group of a huge tract of Millers Kill forest.

In Julia spencer-Fleming's fourth Clare Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne mystery we focus on the logging & hunting aspect of this rural New York state town.

On a dry, crisp November dawn, deer hunting season opens &...
 • Someone has been abducted & left bound & gagged in the dark.
 • The Reverend Clare is woken up to assist in a Search & Rescue for Millie van der Hoeven, one of the owners of the land who, along with her college friend, Becky Castle, has set in motion the deal with the conservationists.
 • Ed Castle is determined to get his first buck of the season even if the logging business his grandfather started is about to collapse because the forest he's been logging all his life will be off limits if the deal goes through.
 • Police Chief Van Alstyne is also looking forward to getting out for a perfect morning hunt, until he gets the call.
 • Gene, Millie's younger brother, scarred from a fiercesome fire that had killed his mother, lives alone in the huge old family lodge deep in the woods, & while he was the one who made the call about his missing sister, he's also violently opposed to losing his land.
 • Ed Castle's daughter, Becky, comes home to finalize the turnover of the land, & rubs salt into her father's wounds when she insists she catalog his logging machinery for insurance purposes.
 • Randy Schoof, a young husband & one of Ed's crew whom he's had to let go now there won't be anymore logging, comes to Ed's home, desperately trying to figure a way to keep doing the only work he knows. When Becky runs over his motorbike in the driveway as she backs out, she offers to drive him to his truck, with a side trip -- out to where her father's machinery sits idle.
 • Shaun Reid's lumber mill is about to go under, & he's frantic to find a way to save it when he stumbles on the missing sister, & seizes his chance at the brass ring.

Money, work, greed & hope all play a part in the desperate lives of those facing financial ruin. Fights & accidents, rage & lies tighten the strands of the web as plots & jealousy seethe in the autumn daylight.

& amid the hunt for the missing woman, the person who beat Becky to an inch of her life & the brother's killer, Clare & Russ move toward a closer union, even as the annual visit of her Episcopal church bishop looms, & the grand opening of a new resort brings Hugh, a sometime lover, to town to squire her for the evening.

As with all Julia Spencer-Fleming mysteries, there are layers upon layers as the denizen of Millers Kill make matters worse by trying to cover their tracks, ending this time with a satisfying & explosive resolution to a confused race against quasi-ecoterrorists.

Highly recommended!

More from Julia Spencer-Fleming:
In the Bleak Midwinter
A Fountain Filled With Blood
Out of the Deep I Cry
(07/31/05)

Rebecca