The Funeral Owl by Jim Kelly

Phillip Dryden is a newspaper editor who is expanding his business by adding more papers to his stewardship.  He has no clue that his new office for the "The Crow" (his paper) is going to be a hotbed of trouble from the past and the present all meshed together...

Severn House allowed me to download an ebook of this story and read it for review (thank you).  It will be published the first of December.

Dryden works well with the police and locals which helps him get news stories.  When he hears about a theft of metal roofing from a church, he goes out on the job to see what he can find.  He gets a good story but what else he finds is much more important.  A Chinese man has been shot and killed and mounted on a cross not far from the church.  Who killed him?

You need to read this book closely.  There are a lot of different factors working here.  There's some gang warfare, an illegal still, a soldier who is now an old man but still carrying the guilt of war, a cop who's probably on the take, and art forger all mixed up in this plot.  There's no straight and narrow path to the truth.

When Dryden got a drawing of a funeral owl, a Boreal, he had a sense of foreboding but he sure didn't foresee the mess that would be forthcoming.  You won't either...