I just finished Slipknot, a mystery by Northwest author Gary McKinney. I liked it, but not for the reasons that I has expected.

The reason that I picked up Slipknot was that the main character is a small town sheriff who is also a fan of the Grateful Dead. I like the Dead, as a matter of fact the music that I play in my office while I work is often one of the Dead concerts that are on line at the Grateful Dead concert archives. From the book cover and blurbs on the back I expected the music and Grateful Dead fan culture to be central to the mystery.

Instead I found myself cought up in a controversy over logging an old growth stand of trees in Washington state, a murdered scientist and various small town charcters interacting with the logging companies and environmentalists who had axes to grind over the proposed logging. The Grateful dead were in the story as a small amount of color for one character, nothing more.

I did like the book. I thought the mystery was well plotted, there were numerous twists and turns and once I was about halfway through I had to stay up and finish the book. So don't pick it up because you are a music fan, pick it up becasue it is an enjoyable mystery.

---Bruce