A Death in Door Countyby Annelise Ryan
Rating: ★★★½
isbn: 9780593441572
Series: Monster Hunter Mystery #1
Publication Date: September 13, 2022
Pages: 336
Genre: Fiction, Mystery
Publisher: Berkley
Morgan Carter, owner of the Odds and Ends bookstore in Door County, Wisconsin, has a hobby. When she’s not tending the store, she’s hunting cryptids—creatures whose existence is rumored, but never proven to be real. It’s a hobby that cost her parents their lives, but one she’ll never give up on.
So when a number of bodies turn up on the shores of Lake Michigan with injuries that look like bites from a giant unknown animal, police chief Jon Flanders turns to Morgan for help. A skeptic at heart, Morgan can’t turn down the opportunity to find proof of an entity whose existence she can’t definitively rule out. She and her beloved rescue dog, Newt, journey to the Death’s Door strait to hunt for a homicidal monster in the lake—but if they’re not careful, they just might be its next victims.
This arrived just as I was finishing my last Halloween Bingo read, and it felt like just the thing to start next. I’ve read most of Ryan’s previous work, and I’m a huge fan of her Mattie Winston series, but I’m not quite sure how I feel about this one. It’s fun, and it has a lot to like, but it might be a case of too much of a good thing.
First the device I didn’t care for at all: Morgan, the MC, has a tragic past – seriously brutal. It isn’t the tragedy or the retelling of it that I didn’t care for, but the lack of resolution. It’s clear that this is going to be a background ‘thing’ that lurks in future books in the series. I’m sort of over multi-book story arcs and this one, because of its nature, interests me even less than most.
Morgan as a character, though, is kind of refreshing. She’s very pragmatic, so there’s no cutesy giddiness that has invaded cozies in the last decade. She runs a mystery bookshop, but it’s also a shop that sells macabre and weird items, which I love, but there were a few times it felt like the author was trying to make the reader uncomfortable. As if she’s single handedly trying to over-correct the current course of the cozy sub-genre. This is a tactic I appreciate, but might have been done a bit more subtly.
She is also a cryptozoology consultant, and she comes at it from the perspective of a sceptic: think Mulder’s desire to believe and Scully’s need for scientific explanation rolled into one personality. She has degrees in biology and zoology and really is a highly rational MC. I liked her, but I feel like Ryan’s still trying to find her footing with her. Ryan has an easier time of it with the supporting cast, who are all quirky, but also instantly likeable. Newt the dog was awesome. Seriously, I think he’s every animal lover’s dream dog, and Morgan every dog’s dream owner.
The plot was … interesting but not well constructed. There wasn’t a shred of doubt in my mind what they were ultimately looking for – it was obvious from their very first boat trip. There were moments where the author stumbled a bit, trying to meld a cryptozoological investigation with investigations into the deaths of the victims; ungraceful moments when it was clear the MC was overstepping but the story couldn’t really move forward if she didn’t. Still, there were a few unique bits and pieces along the way, and the solution was satisfying. I’ll definitely and happily read the next book and look forward to a fun new series (fingers crossed).