Book of the Week #33

Highboy: A New England Cozy by Steve Sherman. (Hancock, NH: Appledore Books, 2001)

Sherman lives in a small New Hampshire village and has written guidebooks about nature trails and county roads in addition to his novels about investigator Hugh Quint. In addition to Highboy these include Maple Sugar Murders, and Primary Crime. These crime novels are billed as "New England Cozies" and are unusual for a cozy in that the character doing the investigating is a man. Highboy was originally published in 1989 under the title The White Mountain Murders.

"By the time he reached Longfiled, the sun was high and Hugh was feeling the draw of the mighty White Mountains ahead. Sleek Interstate 93 wound alongside the glacier-cut vallys and deep into the tightening notches that
sliced the range. Late September was changing the steep forests to reds and oranges, yellows and browns, igniting the hillsides in benign flames -- another annual autumn miracle. This was the time of year when three million gawkers came to northern New Hampshire to parade by confetti hills and valleys that existed nowhere else on earth in such profusion and variety." (p. 9)