Jhonni Laurent is the sheriff of Field's Crossing, Indiana, and not everyone accepted the election of a woman to the job. But there aren’t any murders in farming country, so her relative lack of experience didn’t matter. Now, everything changes, in a crime fiction that grips the reader. The discovery of BONES UNDER THE ICE during the long snowy winter starts a snowball of grief and misdeeds rolling downhill.
As luck would have it, the date for re-election is fast approaching, so Jhonni, a single lady since her fiancé’s death, has to consider politics as well as crime-solving and co-worker relations. She attends a report of a hand sticking out of a mass of snow and ice pushed together by snowplows and uncovers the frozen body of a teen girl from the high school. Stephanie Gattison had a part-time job and a boyfriend, which points the way for questions to be asked as to why she left her pickup at the old water tower outside town and – apparently – walked a couple of miles with a blizzard howling down upon the area. Then the autopsy indicates that while the exposure killed her, she’d first been struck on the head. Now Jhonni is looking for a murderer.
The rural community contains decades-old - even generations-old, resentments and feuds. Stephanie was Dylan Martin's girlfriend and worked alongside teen sulker Theo Tillman, and their two families are constantly absorbed in a feud over land and water access. Stephanie doesn’t wish the Martins and Tillmans to come to blows. She’s also very much aware that deputy sheriff Mike Greene wants her job. He’s pally with a strangely biased newspaperman, Ralph Howard, who tries to sway the folks of Field’s Crossing away from re-electing Jhonni.
Between the details of driving snowplows and thawing bodies and the winter sport of ice fishing, this is a cold, cold story. Only Deputy Dak Aikens seems unaffected, full of youth and energy while others wrap up and catch colds. The café is a good place for old-time farmers to sit and bicker amiably, and so we learn with Jhonni a good deal about farming and finances. I enjoyed this crime fiction BONES UNDER THE ICE a great deal. I spotted the motive for the killing early but was quite happy to read through all the steps and stages before the resolution, as it was an immersive experience. This is the first in a series about Jhonni Laurent and I look forward to revisiting Field’s Crossing, especially to see the land in better weather. The second story will be called Cracks Beneath The Surface, set around Eastertime.
Jhonni Laurent is the first female sheriff of Field' s Crossing, Indiana— and now she has her first murder case
Two days after a blizzard hits Field' s Crossing, Indiana, Sheriff Jhonni Laurent discovers the frozen body of a high school senior under a fifteen-foot pile of snow and ice. Murder is rare in farm country, and this death marks the beginning of Jhonni' s first homicide case.
Just as the investigation gets underway, Jhonni' s opponent for sheriff from four years ago wages a bitter reelection battle to oust her. Then, Jhonni finds another body, and further complications arise when a century-old feud between two families reaches its breaking point.
Soon, a slew of newspaper articles causes the Indiana State Election Board to doubt her credibility. Jhonni must fight to maintain her reputation, keep the small farming community together, and find the murderer at large— all while demons from her own past threaten to crush her. Can she find the killer and mend her battered spirit before it' s too late?
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