Red Jacket

With forecasts calling for temperatures well below zero, I was more than a trifle excited to be absconding to a far warmer clime in Central America for a mid winter vacation. Just as thrilling though, was the opportunity to spend some time buried in a handful of good reads. After working my way through a dense historical tome, I turned to lighter and more colorful fare; Joseph Heywood's "Red Jacket." Having never read any of Heywood's popular Grady Service Woods Cop mystery series, this seemed like a great opportunity to get a feel for the author as well as get in on a new series from the get go. And I am mighty glad I did.

Like the Woods Cop series, "Red Jacket" is set deep within Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Yet in addition to taking us all the way up to the Keweenaw, "Red Jacket" also takes us back to this Peninsula's mining heyday where we meet Lute Bapcat, "cowboy, Rough Rider, beaver trapper," and now the area's newest game warden.

With a violent, mining labor strike erupting, Bapcat is quickly put to work when decapitated deer carcasses left to rot start popping up, fish streams are poisoned, and odd deforestation occurs all apparently orchestrated by the mine owners in order to starve out the strikers.  True to the 1913 historical reality and despite fictional Bapcat's best efforts, the strike culminates in the Italian Hall disaster in which 73 people were crushed or suffocated when a yell of fire in a packed hall led to a panic.

Despite this less than rosy ending, a dose of justice leads to a satisfying conclusion yet it is not necessarily the twists and turns of this mystery that make it worth reading. Instead, it is the plethora of big, colorful characters, the gritty, outdoorsy action, the firm grounding in both the history and the culture of a unique time and place, and the short, sharp dialogue that make "Red Jacket" an enjoyable read. That being said, the tale is occasionally slowed by an overabundance of trivial characters while also being hampered by a somewhat formulaic approach but these weaknesses are more than overshadowed in what turned out to be the perfect vacation read.