Cold Case

Fishing guide and part-time sleuth Sam Sawyer is with a client in the remote backcountry of Everglades National Park, when they come upon the abandoned remains of an old red canoe. Forensic evidence suggests it may have belonged to Sebastian Brophy, a fisherman who disappeared without a trace twenty-five years earlier. Brophy’s day job had been working as a municipal building inspector, but his passion was conservation of wildlife in Florida Bay and the everglades. Further evidence revealed that Brophy almost certainly had been murdered. Sam and his wife Katie—a forensic scientist—work with local law enforcement to search for someone with a motive to kill the man. Did Brophy have the goods on a pair of lobster and conch poachers, or had he scuttled the dreams of unscrupulous builders and developers out for revenge? The challenge, as in any cold case, was to piece together a mystery that had lain dormant for a quarter century.

Carl and Jane Bock are retired Professors of Biology from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Carl received his PhD in Zoology from the University of California at Berkeley, while Jane holds three degrees in Botany, a B.A. from Duke, an MA from the University of Indiana, and a PhD from Berkeley. Carl is an ornithologist and conservation biologist. Jane is a plant ecologist and an internationally recognized expert in the use of plant evidence in criminal investigations. Now largely retired from academic life, the Bocks have turned their creative efforts toward fiction writing, and are co-authors of two ongoing series, the Arizona Borderlands Mysteries and the Florida Swamp Guide Mysteries.