LINDA HUTCHINSON - MOSTLY MYSTERY REVIEWS

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	Linda J. Hutchinson has been writing since she learned how to print her name. First published at 17, she has since written numerous stories and articles that have appeared in magazines and newspapers, trade journals, newsletters, and on websites. She is self-employed as a Freelance Writer, Reporter/Photographer, and Copywriter. Holding down regular jobs in banking, real estate, insurance, and accounting to support her family, she was tapped to do the writing for everything from press releases to employee handbooks to articles for the corporate magazines. Her volunteer endeavors followed suit and she was soon writing for the Board of Realtors, the March of Dimes, United Way, and a host of others--on a volunteer basis--as a corporate "loaned" employee. Her grandfather and father, both now deceased, and husband Michael, were and are her most loyal supporters in the writing arena. A mystery/suspense novel is in process. Expect murder and mayhem on an International scale!

WOLVES EAT DOGS
Martin Cruz Smith
Pocket Books/Simon & Schuster, Inc., 336pp
ISBN: 13:978-0-671-77595-7
ISBN: 10:0-671-77595-2

How does one Senior Investigator resolve an apparent suicide—one enveloping him with the unmistakable aroma of foul play—when the related bodies keep stacking up? Martin Cruz Smith has made living at ground zero of the Chernobyl accident seem warranted, explainable, bone-chilling, electrifyingly dangerous, and romantic—all at the same time.

Surrounded by and unable to escape the radioactivity that doesn’t exist anywhere but here, banished Arkady Renko manages to ingratiate himself with the locals who have defied all seemingly intelligent logic to return to their homes and their centuries-old way of life with single-minded determination. He also manages to infuriate his corrupt bosses, violate codes of the Russian Mafia, appease Jewish visitors including one American running from the law in two worlds, and piss off the local doctor who risks her own life by attempting to keep those in “the zone” alive, if not well.

Add in one orphaned boy who doesn’t talk but plays brilliant chess, cesspools of stench, higher-ups who wish to control Renko to enrich their own ill-gotten gains, messages from the dying, and you have a page turner that haunts long after you know how it ends.

Smith’s imagery carries the reader along on each chase through the still-glowing paths of dead pine trees, into the abyss of dead cooling ponds, and directly into the path of danger coming at us from every direction.

Linda J. Hutchinson
www.lindajhutchinson.com

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