The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers, or at least one. . . . Vance Hayes died late one night when his snowmobile broke through thin ice near the Wisconsin Dells. The cold-hearted, hard-headed lawyer is unmourned by clients, colleagues, or anyone else--including his reluctant eulogist, fellow attorney Rep Pennyworth.

Interest in Hayes' death is truly perfunctory until it intersects with peril facing charmingly ingenuous Vietnamese-American court reporter Sue Key, tied to Milwaukee's Hmong community. Could Hayes have died not because of any of the rotten and vicious things he spent his career doing to literally hundreds of people, but because of the one decent, human endeavor that marked his adult life?

The situation is complicated further by deer season when several weeks in the fall, 700,000 people carrying loaded firearms head "up north." And by the presence of a gaggle of lawyers, patrician and plebian, grouped around Indianapolis and Milwaukee, not to mention a private eye, an e-tailer into books, and a seedy photographer. Can Rep and his shrewd wife Melissa find in them the key to solving the puzzle of Vance Hayes' death?

Reviews

Deer hunting ... plays a part in ... Michael Bowen's latest sneakily smart mystery about lawyer Reppert Pennyworth and his wife, Melissa. Asked to deliver the eulogy for a notoriously unlikable fellow lawyer, Rep wonders why--and soon finds out. Bowen moves the Pennyworths from Kansas City and dips them deep into the heart of Milwaukee (where the author lives and practices law) and also into the Wisconsin woods, where no good deer goes unpunished. -- Dick Adler, Chicago Tribune (7/23/2006)

• • •

"Rep uncovers an astounding plot that will certainly catch the reader by surprise. . . fans of more literate mysteries have good reason to cheer."

--Publishers Weekly on Unforced Error

• • •

At the start of Bowen's winning third mystery to feature Rep and Melissa Pennyworth (after 2004's Unforced Error), the couple have moved to Milwaukee, Wis., where Melissa has taken a university job and Rep has opened a branch office for his Indiana law firm. When Rep hears of the untimely death of despised attorney Vance Hayes, he's not particularly remorseful, but is shocked when Mackenzie "Ken" Stewart asks him to deliver the eulogy. Rep complies out of respect for Stewart, a well-connected legal eagle who can funnel work to Rep's new office. Almost two years later, Rep is pulled into a strange case involving doctored photographs for a client with ties to Hayes. Rep is soon caught up in a bizarre series of events with too many coincidences and menacing foes. When Melissa tries to help and is nearly killed, Rep is no longer sure whom he can trust. Bowen effectively captures his Midwestern locale and takes readers on a fast-paced, exciting ride. -– Publishers Weekly (5/15/2006)

• • •

"This the cleverest whodunit of the season, wrapped up in the cleverest dialogue."

--Kirkus Reviews on Collateral Damage

• • •

"Intellectual banter remains the key appeal in this third entry in the Rep and Melissa Pennyworth series. Having taken on Kansas City in Unforced Error (2004), the Midwest-trotting couple find themselves in Milwaukee when Rep is asked to deliver the eulogy for a fellow member of the bar, Vance Hayes, a very unpopular fellow who appears to have finally received his comeuppance. Likable copyright attorney Rep turns sleuth when he stumbles on the fact that Hayes’ travels to Asia may have led to his murder. Clean plotting, combined with the marital repartee, makes this a solid winner." —Mary Frances Wilkens Booklist