Blackflies Are Murder

Darleen R. Golke is a high-school teacher-librarian in Winnipeg,
Manitoba.

In the sequel to Northern Winters are Murder (2000), Belle investigates
murder during high summer in Northern Ontario’s Lake Wapiti region.
Belle and her neighbor, Anni, discover a bear-baiting site established
by poachers eager to accommodate “the burgeoning demand for ancient
Chinese medicines based on animal parts.” Anni destroys the trap, but
when Belle discovers Anni dead a few weeks later, she immediately
suspects the poachers’ involvement. When her friend and local Ojibwa
member of “Sudbury’s finest,” Steve Davis, confirms that Anni was
murdered, Belle sets out to solve the mystery.

She finds plenty of suspects. There’s Charles Sullivan, a handsome,
secretive Ottawa retiree; Anni’s nephew Zach, who was always hitting
Anni up for money; Nick, an artist with no visible source of income;
Patsy, a welfare mother

who quarreled with Anni; and local contractor Earl Rogers and his ditzy
wife. Belle’s investigation leads her into Anni’s past and a
residential school in Osprey Inlet run by a Sister Euphemia, who was
suspected of sexually abusing young boys.

Belle is an engagingly down-to-earth heroine who enjoys the wilderness
(except when cursing the blood-sucking blackflies) and juggles the
investigation with her real-estate business, visits to the nursing home
where her 84-year-old father resides, various friendships, and an
involvement with Craig, a homeless man who turns out to be Steve’s
estranged brother. The connection between Craig and Charles is one of
the many twists Belle untangles in this multilayered, satisfying
mystery.