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ForeWord Magazine Mystery "I neared a moment of perfection. My definition of perfection involves moving water, solitude, a fly rod, a dry fly, and a trout."
Hooking the reader as readily as his main character hooks a trout, the opening sentences of Tenuto's first mystery novel are a fluid and tempting lead into a book that is a unique blend of action, sport, suspense, and place. Dahlgren Wallace is a fly-fishing guide working for Fred Lather, a multi-millionaire rancher in Montana. So when Fred tells Dahlgren to show Mormon billionaire, Elden Eldenberry, and his wife, Susi, a good time, he does his best - until Elden is murdered mid-stream while Dahlgren is busy helping Susi, fishing around a bend in the river. When it appears that somebody may be setting Dahlgren up to take the fall for the murder, he is forced to call upon skills he thought he had left behind when he retired from the Marine Corps' elite Force Recon. As he tries to discover who would want Eldenberry dead, he crosses paths with a violent environmental group, a neo-Nazi militia, a colony of peaceful Hutterites, and a secret cattlemen's organization - each group with their own motive for wishing Eldenberry out of the picture. Meanwhile, Dahlgren's boss is receiving threatening letters about the bison he is raising on his ranch that are perceived as a health and economic threat to the local cattle ranchers. The threats are ignored until the Lather's ranch manager turns up dead as well. Then Dahlgren must figure out if the two murders are linked before he can figure out who is responsible. Help comes from the usual sources - his boss and the FBI - and from an unusual one - a chess playing Jewish deli-owner/scholar. The state of Montana plays a central role in the story as it is only here where neo-Nazis and religious communities live almost within shouting distance of one another, and where ranchers and environmentalists daily struggle over issues of land use and preservation. Here too, are the scenic rivers full of rainbow trout where Dahlgren finds his inspiration and peace. In the midst of all the murder and mayhem, and the building of suspense, Tenuto, whose short fiction has appeared in magazines such as California Fly Fisher, intersperses lovingly detailed scenes of fly-fishing right down to the fishing flies. "I've always had luck with the Royal Wulff. Like most attractor flies it's flashy; peacock herl, red floss, brown hackle, and white wings, and it imitates exactly nothing in nature." The rich description invites the reader to share the author's passion for fishing as well as a good mystery well-told. Hooked from the very first sentence, the reader is caught and held until the very end, and then carefully released - eager and ready to be hooked again for the next novel in the Dahlgren Wallace series. (June 2005) Paula Chaffee Scardamalia |
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