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Six-Pound Walleye: A Jake Hines mystery <
b>by Elizabeth Gunn

Set in a frozen Minnesota winter, this novel of the working police moves right along. The policeman, upwardly mobile in his job, nonetheless has confusing woman trouble at home, trouble that will have men and women alike sympathizing with the situation. There's far too little communication in this home.

One aspect of the story that hit close to home, though, was the nature of the victim: a seven-year-old shot in his front yard. On our recent vacation trip, my own child was shot by a sniper lying in wait, fortunately with much less disastrous circumstances (shot by a pellet-gun-wielding Irish boy near his eye, my boy survived, while the boy in the novel was shot with a 22 rifle and killed.

The portrayal of teenage psychology in this novel was not really credible, but the rooftop hostage shootout at the conclusion was filled with lots of jolly-good police cameraderie (the police sniper was afflicted with fear of heights, how ironic!) so I guess that made up for it.

The six-pound walleye at the end was from a non-integral subplot not fully explored during the main exegesis, but it was a nice human interest touch nonetheless.

Cut a hole in the ice and catch yourself a Six-Pound Walleye.

reviewed September 5, 2001