Blood Lake Author:Frank McConnell This is the 2nd book in a series about Harry Garnish and "Sister Godzilla". (The first novel was MURDER AMONG FRIENDS.) — From the dust jacket: "Funny, fast-talking Harry Garnish is strictly a city boy-he claims tht just watching BAMBI gives him hives-but this new case finds him in the authentic wilds. His duties as a private eye have taken him t... more »o a rustic resort on Wisconsin's Lake Manitonaqua-'Blood Lake'-disguised (so he likes to think) as a sportsman with two thirds of an ancient fishing pole and a fifty-year-old tennis racquet loaned by his friend Ben Gross, dry cleaner and philosopher.
Harry is there under protest, but when Bridget O'Toole, the elderly ex-nun who runs O'Toole Investigations, Inc., says 'go', her underlings go. Bridget is the boss, and besides, when she issues an order Harry is immediately transported back to fifth grade at Saint Andrew's School for Boys. His assignment is to observe the actions of a Mrs. Cheryl Howard, who is a guest at the resort.
Cheryl is there, all right, and with her is a man whom Harry recognizes as a sleazy Chicago lawyer. But there is more to this liaison than meets the eye. Since Harry immediately falls half in love with Cheryl (if hardly blind to the charms of the college-coed barmaid, Michelle), he frets about what to tell Bridget and the already suspicious Mr. Howard. The problem, sadly, solves itself when both Cheryl and her companion are found murdered.
Harry is forced to ferret out the killer from among a cast of characters more colorful than the Wisconsin lake country has seen since the French and Indian Wars: there is Elliot Andres, a jazz saxophonist now runniing a gumbo and jambalaya cafe in the woods; Crazy Sam Two Feathers, a huge 'full half-blood Dakota', whose pigtails and bellowing voice at the lake resort vanish when he assumes his customary role s a video salesman; an unknown blackmailer (the same person as the killer? Or not?); some illicitly vacationing 'couples', and an assortment of others. Much to Harry's distress, Briget joins the group. This two-hundred-odd pound anomaly, ... is equally well equipped to cite the story of Saint Thomas Aquinas and the prostitute in defense of her meddling..."« less