HARD CHRISTMAS

Wanting a break from Chicago crime, freelance reporter Cat Marsala heads out to the DeGraaf family farm, deep in Michigan Christmas-tree country. Snuggled in the warmth of the close-knit DeGraafsbrothers Hank (furniture maker who doubles as president of the West Michigan Evergreen Growers Association) and John (high-school English teacher), sister Marie Heidema (X-ray technician at Holland Hospital), and their children and elderly mothershe spends Thanksgiving weekend eating turkey, observing how the family harvests blue spruces and Scotch pines, and gathering information about cutting, grading, and baling. (This last will come in especially useful when somebody puts gang boss Luis Montoya through a baling machine, and Cat's confronted with a killing as coldhearted as anything back in Chicago.) Cat's closeness to John's 13-year-old daughter Nellwho seems painfully vulnerable, maybe because of her possible involvement with Luis, maybe because she thinks her late grandfather was murdered tooand her growing knowledge of the DeGraafs' century-old roots and the crisis their little farm faces make the case particularly poignant, and particularly unpleasant to solve. The title says it all. Despite the evergreen setting, Cat's sixth appearance (Hard Case, 1994, etc.) is one hard Christmasand her saddest book yet.