Crooked Lake by Nelson Brunanski, a Mysterious Review.

Review: Crooked Lake, Nelson Brunanski's first novel featuring Bart Bartowski and subtitled a small-town Saskatchewan mystery, has a genuine northern Canadian folksy appeal to it. The relatively remote locale works well as a village mystery where everyone knows everyone else yet someone still has secrets to hide.

Bart sets out to prove his friend Nick Taylor didn't use his 7 iron to murder the local land baron on the golf course where Nick worked as a greens keeper. As Bart wanders the countryside in search of clues to prove Nick's innocence, the story tends to wander with him, seeming to lose its way a few times. From a plot perspective, it's a little too convenient for Bart that the RCMP apparently have little interest in pursuing this case despite the circumstantial evidence against Nick. Bart is allowed to ask questions the officials should have posed in the first place, and then piece it all together in the end to unmask the real killer.

Nelson Brunanski's casual style of writing, with true sounding dialog and descriptive narrative, works well for both the characters and the setting. Crooked Lake would seem to be a fine debut to this new mystery series set in Saskatchewan.

Acknowledgment: Caronel Publishing provided a copy of Crooked Lake for this review.

Crooked Lake

A Small-Town Saskatchewan Mystery by Nelson Brunanski