Antler Dust
Non-series
Mark Stevens
Paandaa Entertainment (Hardcover)
ISBN-10: 0-9774188-1-2 (0977418812)
ISBN-13: 978-1-9774188-1-7 (9780977418817)
Publication Date: March 2007
List Price: $24.95
Synopsis (from
the publisher): On the opening day of the hunting season in the
Colorado Flat Tops wilderness, two men go missing. The first is a
hunting guide. The second is an animal rights protestor who believes
his creative suicide will galvanize the animal rights movement.
Hunting guide Allison Coil hears a distant rifle shot and sees just
enough through the swirling snow to believe somebody knows
something-and isn't coming forward. But what exactly did she see?
Outfitter George Grumley fends off the formal investigation and works
to discourage the informal and persistent inquiries by Coil. Grumley
knows no limits in the effort to protect his guide service, which
caters to fat-cat clients. Who needs hunting regulations when
technology can produce the quickest and most thrilling hunt that money
can buy?
Dawn Ellenberg, lead dog of the animal rights group FATE - Fighting
Animal Torture Everywhere - plots a public relations blitz behind the
story of hunter who wipes off his camouflage face paint and joins their
crusade. The public relations coup is too good to be true. FATE turns
up the heat on the police in Glenwood Springs, who seem clueless in
their attempts to solve the death of the protestor.
And Trudy Grumley, wife of the notorious outfitter, takes a few bold
steps outside her comfort zone and takes a few tentative steps through
the fog of a limiting disease. She begins a frightening ordeal that
could-just maybe-lead to independence. Along the way, she befriends
Coil and the pair chart a course to uncover the truth, no matter where
that course leads.
Review: Mark Stevens’ debut thriller, Antler Dust,
chronicles a few weeks in the lives of hunters and their guides. It is
elk and deer hunting season in Colorado with hunters swarming to the
Rocky Mountains to nail their big one. Two men are shot on that first
day. Rocky Carnivitas, a guide, is deliberately killed for reasons
known only the killer. Rocky is pulled away from the site of the
shooting and put under a tree in the snow. Only one problem: from a
distance, and through a heavy snowfall, new guide Allison Coil
witnesses what she thinks is someone dragging an animal or a body
through the heavy snow.
Then there is a suicidal hunter, Ray Stern, who believes if he were
killed the animal rights people would have more fodder. His group, FATE
(Fighting Animal Torture Everywhere), is on the ground protesting. Ray
goes up into the mountain, wraps himself in deerskin, and waits for a
hunter. When Dean Applegate sees what he thinks is a deer, he shoots
and kills Ray. Frightened, Dean runs down the mountain and joins the
protesters saying he could not take the killing of any more animals.
Allison tells the sheriff what she thinks she has seen, but when she
gets no response from him, she tells the park ranger who is also
skeptical. When Rocky does not return to the camp for four days, they
begin to listen to her. The question becomes, why was Rocky killed and
by whom?
But the answer is obvious. Antler Dust
is a tiresome novel in that there is no mystery. Every time a person is
hurt or killed the reader knows who did it and why. Much of the story
is repetitive and it becomes apparent what is going to happen next.
There is no thrill of the hunt, metaphorical or otherwise, in this book.
Special thanks to guest reviewer Betty of The Betz Review for contributing her review of Antler Dust and to Breakthrough Promotions for providing a copy of the book for this review.
Review Copyright © 2007 — Hidden Staircase Mystery Books — All Rights Reserved.
Omnimystery keywords for Antler Dust ...
Location(s) referenced: Colorado.