Game Warden Joe Pickett has been told about a dead moose on someone’s property, and has gone to investigate to see if it’s natural causes or someone winging a moose out of season and then living the poor creature to die in flight. When he arrives at the location, though, he’s horrified to learn that the corpse is not a moose, but  a human being: a fly fisherman  guide who has a shack not too far away.   When he investigates the man’s cabin, he discovers evidence that the poor man was tortured  with ordinary house tools before being set alight, and our horrified warden has to wonder what on earth could have transpired. At the same time, Mary-Beth has discovered a bizarre donation at the library: a photo album from the year 1937 belonging to a senior Nazi official,  one who collected shots of himself hob-nobbing with Hitler and other Nazi elites, along with his activities in the Reich that year. How on Earth did a top Nazi’s private photos find their way not only to America, but to a little town library in the middle of Wyoming?    When suspicious sorts are spotted in town,  Joe and Mary-Beth realize their two discoveries are linked: someone wants that album, and they’ll kill to get it.  Meanwhile, Nate Romanowski’s  wife was beaten and his falcons stolen by an amoral cretin who is using falcon sales to Saudi emirs to bankroll evil – and, as it turns out, the cretin is going to be a villain with some staying power. 

Well, this is as strange a Thanksgiving novel as anyone could ask! While Joe and Marybeth are looking forward to the return of their daughters to the new family home –  Joe’s last one was burnt by a vengeful ex-con and the state dragged their feet on building a new “game station” –     discovering another murder just down the road throws a pall over  Turkey Day, as does the fact that Nate, who was supposed to be at the table with his wife Liv and their daughter Kestrel, is instead involved in hunting down a former special operative who is now embittered against DC and wants to foment riots using antifa  as his useful (and newly armed) idiots.   Fortunately,  Nate – who is just as close to fifty as Joe is now – has backup in the form of another falconer named “Geronimo”, and the two will make their way through metropolises filled with sons and daughters of privilege LARPing as black-clad social justice warriors chasing a villain with the appropriately memorable name of Axel Soledad. The central mystery to this one was very interesting to a WW2 history fan, and I enjoyed Nate having a ‘wingman’ for a change.