BLUE WOLF

Jackson Hole, Wyoming, art gallery owner Alix Thorssen (Nordic Nights, 1999, etc.) has a few problems on her hands. It’s off-season and sales are slow; her boyfriend, a Wildlife Service chopper pilot named Carl, has become too demanding; and mercurial Terry Vargas, co-chair of the art auction to benefit the Teton Land Trust, has decided not to include two paintings by Queen Johns, mainly because the two have taken opposing sides on releasing wolves into the wilds, and she’s threatened him with a rifle for setting out wolf traps. Then there’s Queen’s promise of two free paintings if Alix will look into the death of young Derek Wylie in a hunting accident 25 years ago. Meanwhile, Marc Fontaine, an employee of the Bar-T-Bar ranch, has been arrested for shooting a wolf; nice auction co-chair Morris Kale accidentally shoots his wife—or was it no “accident”?—and unraveling the cover-up cloaking Derek’s death leads Alix to question who his two companions were that day, and how a blue wolf came to be slaughtered just before. There’ll be a suicide, several cantankerous confrontations with Vargas, and innumerable wolf sightings before the bully who browbeat others into killing both animals and people is brought to justice, and Queen and the blue wolf can head for a restorative spell alone in the Wyoming hills.

Clunky dialogue, contrived plotting, and a heroine as warm as a Wyoming snowbank in February. But the wolf tracking, reentry program, and nightly howl sessions are worth the slog.