The Opener

Opening morning. One ham biscuit. One cut strap.

For forty seven years the Hollenbach deer camp has climbed Pine Swamp Road in Potter County for the first day of rifle season, and for forty seven years it has shot almost nothing. This year it has a new cook: retired accountant Walt Brubaker, in a blaze orange coat that makes him look like a traffic cone that does taxes.

At first light Walt carries the traditional ham biscuit up the ridge to the landowner's tree stand and finds Dutch Kightlinger dead at the foot of his white oak. The trooper calls it an accident. Through a pair of binoculars from Cape May, Walt sees a strap that was cut, not torn.

Then the lake effect snow shuts the only road for three days. Seven men, a game warden, a membership chairman from Pittsburgh, and a doe who comes every morning for the bird seed are stuck on the mountain with a coffee can kitty that is five hundred dollars too heavy and pink survey ribbons that say LOT 7.

Everybody wants to know who was in the woods at dawn. Walt, who has read the fine print for forty one years, starts to wonder if they are all asking about the wrong day.

A retired accountant who measures pancakes with a ruler and counts his steps up the ridge

A camp ledger kept in pencil for forty seven years, with every dead man's share still paid

A game warden who has heard every excuse in Potter County and believes none of them

A man from Pittsburgh in a camel coat who drives into a ditch singing show tunes

A doe named Deer Five who comes for breakfast and will not be hunted

Big laughs, real heart, and a fair play puzzle with every clue on the page

No graphic violence, no explicit scenes, no bad language.

Just a good mystery, a snowed in camp full of men you'll want to share a stove with, and an opening day nobody on that mountain will forget.

The Opener is Book Three in the Vera Crus Funny Cozy Mystery series, and it stands on its own. Lace up your boots. The biscuits are warm.

Opening morning at the hunting camp, and one cut strap that was no accident.