Blue Deer, Montana, and another visit to the series featuring Sheriff Jules Clement of Absaroka County. Winter has lain heavy on the town and a brief BLUE DEER THAW is followed by more snow. There'll be another thaw, but not soon enough to save a local lady from freezing to death in the snow between her isolated home and a bar. She had been drinking, so the cold was more dangerous, but how come her home was locked and her husband didn’t hear her knocking as he slept? Jules is suspicious that Leon Baden, who could be described as a mean-tempered man, deliberately left his wife Anne out in the cold.

Jules has distractions, including topping up his official income by using his days off to help with cataloguing the esoteric art collection at the Sacajawea Hotel. While his archaeologist training helps, he’s not an expert in fine art. The hotel renovation will ideally be completed by the time his dear friends, Alice Wahlgren and Peter Johansen, get married at the venue in spring. Meanwhile, all the small portable objects and paintings with artistic worth seem irresistible to some.

Deputy Caroline Fair, who arrived in the previous book, and the rest of the crew, Jonathan, Harvey, Grace and Ed, are fast becoming friends with regular readers of the series. The hectic parade of cases large and small – from loose livestock to travellers killed by avalanches or icy rivers – keeps Jules and staff too busy to concentrate on any one issue.

I had an odd experience while reading. I was two-thirds of the way through and thought I could finish the book that day. Then I thought, no, I don’t want to, because it’s the last book. I’ll miss everyone. I left it and came back the next day, but by then, I’d developed a panic that with Jules considering leaving the sheriff’s office and gaining a romantic life, final events might go badly for him and others. I did not want that to happen. Normally, I leave characters on the page, but these had started to feel very real to me through the four books.

The good news is, after finishing the story I discovered that an extra book was written in 2024, The River View. So we can visit Absaroka County another time without re-reading. Jamie Harrison deserves top marks for creating her heavy-drinking, overworked, winter-tired cast, placed in a landscape they understand that seems too bitter for outsiders to last. BLUE DEER THAW is a detailed, woven crime story, with humour, joy, and sadness, for mature readers.