In Death by the Bay, after the 93-year-old director of Green Bay’s prestigious Institute for Progressive Medicine dies suddenly during a medical conference at Door County’s Green Arbor Lodge, Cubiak’s investigation reveals the doctor was striving to uncover a link between Down syndrome and Alzheimer’s disease. Equally compelling is the fact that each author based their plots on haunting historical incidents that reveal real-world tragedies amid contemporary murder mysteries. The Dead of Achill Island is the fourth title in the “Nora Barnes and Toby Sandler Mystery” series featuring an art historian and her sidekick husband.īoth stories feature several despicable characters, which makes trying to figure out whodunit all the more fun. They’re also rife with memorable scenes in such unexpected places as the rubble of an asylum and the sauna of a kinky swingers’ club.īoth will be out from the University of Wisconsin Press this month.ĭeath by the Bay is the fifth title in the “Dave Cubiak Door County Mystery” series, featuring a former Chicago cop who, after witnessing the death of his wife and daughter, relocated to Door County to rebuild his life and eventually wound up as sheriff. Patricia Skalka’s Death by the Bay, and The Dead of Achill Island by UW-Madison English professors emeriti Betsy Draine and Michael Hinden, are set on opposite sides of the world - Door County’s peninsula and Ireland’s largest island, respectively. Was this the widow’s missing handyman? Could the two deaths be related? With what has become a hallmark for books in the series, past and present collide as Cubiak’s search for answers uncovers the sad legacy of loneliness and the disquieting links between wealth and poverty on the peninsula.A pair of moody mysteries by established Wisconsin authors will provide readers with a double dose of death this summer. Later that week, an explosion in an ice fishing shack on the frozen bay leads to the discovery of another body, burned beyond recognition. The scene bears all the characteristics of an accidental fall, not unheard of for a person of her age, but something is not adding up. Lying at the bottom of a flight of stairs, clutching a valuable bronze sculpture, she points her outstretched hand in the direction of a nearby, nondescript ring. His initial disquiet is easily dismissed-until she is found dead the next morning in her home.

With Door County caught in the grip of a fierce winter storm, Sheriff Dave Cubiak agrees to do a simple favor for a friend of his wife: he stops by to check in on an affluent widow with a questionable new suitor.

Death by the Bay by Patricia Skalka