W A Winter: 3 books

Minneapolis, Minnesota, during the steamy summer of 1953. When publishing-company heir Bower Stockman hires Frank Gates, a middle-aged, down-on-his-luck private investigator, to arrange a murder, Gates reluctantly contacts “handyman” Harry Fairchild. As Frank knows only too well, Harry, a childhood...

Whittier Avenue, on the tranquil South Side of Minneapolis, seems to be a happy place in the spring of 1948. Below its sunny surface, however, the neighborhood seethes with dark secrets. Young family man Buddy Bailey is tormented by forbidden visions of a teenaged neighbor even as he plunges into...

Rennie Beausoleil and Werther Wolfe are middle-aged brothers-in-law whose edgy relationship dates back to their high school days when they struggled to outdo each other concocting imaginary “perfect” murders. Twenty years later, in the late 1980s, Beausoleil, a short-tempered, hard-drinking, skirt-chasing...