TT2: Wolf Bog

Welcome to Mysteries to Die For and this Toe Tag.I am TG Wolff and am here with Jack, my piano player and producer. This is normally a podcast where we combine storytelling with original music to put you at the heart of mystery, murder, and mayhem. Today is a bonus episode we call a Toe Tag. What’s a Toe Tag? It is the first chapter from a fresh release in the mystery, crime, and thriller genre.Today’s featured release is Wolf Bog, a Berkshire Hilltown Mystery by Leslie Wheeler. Wolf Bog was released July 6, 2022 from Encircle Publications and is available from Amazon and other book retailers.About Leslie Wheeler. An award-winning author of books about American history and biographies, Leslie Wheeler turned to mystery writing to give herself the freedom to make things up. While she still salts her mysteries with actual history, she now offers an exciting story in the present. Her Miranda Lewis Living History Mystery series debuted with Murder at Plimoth Plantation, set at the living history museum and re-released as a trade paperback from Encircle Publishing. Other series titles are: Murder at Gettysburg, set at a re-enactment of the famous battle, and Murder at Spouters Point, set at a fictionalized Mystic Seaport. Find her at https://www.lesliewheeler.com/From July 1-31, 2022 Wolf Bog is on tour with Partners in Crime. Check out the tour link for more content and information. https://www.partnersincrimetours.net/wolf-bog-by-leslie-wheeler/TG Wolff ReviewThis book is an amateur sleuth story where Katheryn Stinson, a curator of prints and photographs for a small library, is drawn into the mystery of the surfacing body of a local man who went missing forty years prior. Rating: Wolf Bog on a 5-point scale against the “perfect amateur sleuth”, I give this 3.75.Strengths of the story. The story pacing is deliberate, continuously dropping breadcrumbs as the book winds through two main storylines. The planning and detailing of the stories were well thought out and executed. The setting of a small town in the Berkshires provides enough detail to “feel” the place without being overly descriptive. The characters are very likeable and can easily become the type of friends you want to return to story after story. They are continuing from previous books, which I have not read. Wheeler did an excellent job of providing enough context for me to understand the relationships without providing synopses of prior books. This book is well written and free of errors.Where the story fell short of the ideal. Wheeler created an interesting but challenging story with part rooted in a past 40-years old and part rooted in the present. To meet the ideal, the elements of the story had to have strong logic in character behavior in both time periods. When you get to the end and look back over the entirety of the story, do the actions of all the players (not just the hero) hold up? Wheeler did such a good job covering up the original crime, there was little to work in modern time. As a result, Katheryn’s role in this story was less of a sleuth and more of a narrator, moving the story along its arc. Bottom line: Wolf Bog is for you if you prefer small town mysteries with likeable characters, deliberate pacing and/or the Berkshire setting.