Small town secrets unravel in Adirondack mountains

My latest choice was “The Lure” by S.W. Hubbard. It is one of a three-book set in his Frank Bennet Adirondack Mountain Mysteries.

A few years ago, Frank Bennett thought his life was over. His beloved wife was dead. He was estranged from his only child, Caroline, and he’d lost his job with the Kansas City Police Department due to a hasty assumption.

He’s starting over as police chief in Trout Run, New York. Frank isn’t concerned when Debbie at the Stop ‘N Buy calls, saying that Mary Pat Sheehan hasn’t shown up for work. Mary Pat was 28 and very dependable.

A call from a citizen alerts Frank. Mary Pat has been found in her car out on Harkness Road. An autopsy shows she died from an infection caused by improper care following childbirth. Her parents insist that Mary Pat had never dated and could not have been pregnant.

Frank finds information indicating Mary Pat had given her baby to an adoption agency known as Sheltering Arms, but there’s no trace of this agency in New York state. He concludes that this is a sham business luring desperate young women into selling their newborns to wealthy couples.

With a bit of digging, he finds the couple who planned to adopt the baby. They are heartbroken and angry because the agency took the baby back and demanded more money — money they didn’t have. Frank has several suspects in the medical field. He’s sure that someone local must be involved.

Once again, he has suspects, but no proof linking them. Using a bit of blackmail, Frank is able find the baby’s father. Sanjiv Patel never knew that Mary Pat was pregnant and very much wants the baby.

While Frank is working on the baby-selling case, well-known environmental activist Nathan Golding is found shot to death. His arrival in Trout Run sparked a protest at the gates of Raging Rapids, a local tourist stop. They insist that it is damaging the environment.

Frank can’t help wondering why they are protesting Raging Rapids and not the massive home being built further up the mountain. Frank’s gut tells him that something is off. The more he learns, the more he is convinced that all three cases are connected.

While investigating Mary Pat’s case, Frank encounters a strange family living off the grid. When a deputy’s girlfriend decides to pretend to be pregnant and ends up at the encampment, Frank arrives to take her home. As she leaves the house, the family’s guard dogs attack and nearly kill her.

Suddenly, a passing comment from a little girl from the compound gives Frank the clue he desperately needs. He focuses on a local woman who works as a nurse at the clinic used by Mary Pat. The expenses in her husband’s Parkinson’s care could lure her to seek out pregnant girls and convince them to turn their babies over to Sheltering Arms.

Frank is amazed at her calm insistence that she is innocent until faced with even a short jail term. The thought of putting her husband in a nursing home is too much, and she confesses. That confession turns Frank’s attention back to the Goldings.

In the end they learn that Meredith Golding was behind the baby scheme. She used the money to fund the group’s environmental causes. Nathan knew nothing about it but died when the man who wanted to adopt Mary Pat’s baby confronted him on a hiking trail.

In Kansas City, Frank had always been able to keep his distance from the people he served, but he can’t do that in Trout Run. Like it or not, he realizes that he must learn more about his neighbors than he wants to know.

AT A GLANCE
BOOK: “The Lure”
AUTHOR: S.W. Hubbard
PUBLISHER: Simon and Schuster
PUBLISHED: May 5, 2015
PAGES: 263