Murder on the Red Cliff Rez
 Mardi Oakley Medawar
 (Reviewed by The Editor - Rebecca Brown)
 2002 St. Martin's/Minotaur
  ISBN: 031220938X


The Chippewa Red Cliff Reservation in Northern Wisconsin, is usually a placid place where no one has been murdered in 50 years.

After ceramic artist & erstwhile tracker, Karen Charboneau, has returned to the Rez, life suddenly changes when the Tribal Lawyer is found untidily sprawled upon the brand new, light blue carpeting of the Tribal Courthouse, shot in the head. The trouble is no one really liked Judah Boiseneau, neither his lawyering nor his married life. He was an abusive husband whose wife, eventually, turned to his cousin for love & comfort. Naturally, Benny Peliquin is suspect number one, & he has vanished, as too the grieving widow with her children.

While Karen Charboneau is a thoroughly modern woman, her toes & her training are deeply rooted in the ways of the Ancients. True to her generation, she is also one of the stubbornest, most self-actualized persons to walk the earth, & her off-again/on-again romance with David Lamereaux, the current Tribal Chief of Police, is as confused as a crow in a chicken coop.

Mardi Oakley Medawar, with four other books to her credit, has spun a fine murder mystery, richly textured with glimpses of reservation life, Indian humor & body language, & the vast landscape of the great Northern woods -- or what's left of them.

While there are two slayings of humans by humans in Murder on the Red Cliff Rez, author Mardi Oakley Medawar, recounts another decimation, which is at the heart of this mystery, & because of this T. M. Barron's The Ancient One & Naomi M. Stokes' The Tree People came to mind.

Murder on the Red Cliff Rez is a well-crafted mystery, with an amusing & deftly drawn cast of characters straight out of the woodwork of Northern Wisconsin, where no one in their right minds would want to live. Right? Wrong! Mardi Oakley Medawar thinks it's paradise, & she carefully paints the landscape that she knows by heart, & brings it into our sitting rooms for our enjoyment.

Well done! Entertaining & informative.

More from Mardi Oakley Medawar: Death at Rainy Mountain; Witch of Palo Duco; Murder at Medicine Lodge; The Ft. Larned Incident.
(09/29/02)

Rebecca