Dead Before the End of the Road: Kate Heikkinen Mysteries

Kara Heikkinen finds the murdered man while inspecting a farm for potential cattle-poaching evidence. She is immediately determined to solve the crime because as both a sheriff’s sergeant and an autistic woman, she requires a level of order in her world. Allowing the villagers in her Finnish-American town to kill each other and dump the bodies in cow ponds isn't orderly. 

Unfortunately, the job of solving the crime technically belongs to the State Detective. Not that any of the locals will communicate with him—they barely speak to each other. But she can use her connections to do what the detective cannot—talk to locals like the dead man’s mother, a suspect’s neighbor, and her own well-informed cousin who happened to employ the dead man. She learns of a well-hidden affair, a missing engagement ring, the victim’s anger over drugs given to his cousin, and envy among ‘friends’ over the victim’s girlfriend. 

Can Kara solve the murder and put her world back in order before the murderer flees the small town on the shores of Lake Superior and is lost forever?