Claire Watkins Books

Police officer Clare Watkins moves with her young daughter to Wisconsin to get away from the past and it's bad memories. But Clare doesn't know that her ten-year-old daughter Meg not only witnessed the hit-and-run accident that killed her father, she had also seen the man who was driving...and had been seen by him.

Blood Relations Though life in the rural Wisconsin border country is having some healing effects for ex-Minneapolis cop Claire Watkins, she is still plagued by nightmares of past tragedy. Now she's plunged into a shattering murder case that will force her to confront the demons that still haunt her. Jeb Spitzer is knifed to death at the local harvest moon dance. A widower for four years, he leaves three teenagers orphaned. But Claire senses a feeling of desperate relief among the three kids. As she peels back the layers of the crime, she uncovers a shocking connection to Spitzer's wife's "accidental" death, and secrets that premeditated both incidents. But in order to prevent another senseless death, she will have to confront the human capacity to kill -- from which she herself is not immune.

Startled to discover that Buck's seemingly accidental death was actually murder, Claire Watkins suspects that Buck's lover Stephanie Klaus, an abused woman, might be responsible until she finds Stephanie brutally beaten and wandering down the highway, forcing Clair to race against time to catch a killer, while a brutal snowstorm wreaks havoc on the town.

Then the quiet was broken. The baby reached up a hand and jerked at the tablecloth. A spoon hit her on the head, and she started to cry. Bertha Schuler stuck her head out the door and called that dinner was ready. The clock in the hallway struck the half hour. And the first shot was fired. The unsolved murders at a remote Wisconsin farmhouse half a century ago have receded into time. But one deranged man will do anything to make sure that all of Pepin County remembers that bloody day. The world was out of balance. It had been so for nearly fifty years. Only he could see it. Only he could change it. When a quantity of dangerous pesticides is stolen from the local co-op, Deputy Sheriff Claire Watkins is called in to investigate. The thief has left one bizarre clue: the finger bone of a child long dead. The pesticides soon reappear with devastating effect—in flowerbeds, in animal feed, and in a fatal concoction at a Fourth of July picnic. Each time, a tiny human bone is left at the scene. With the help of Harold Peabody, the quirky, aging editor of the Durand Daily , Claire unravels the secrets of the past, leading her to a pair of young lovers, a man enraged over his mother’s death, an obsessive recluse, and the deputy who first discovered the corpses of the Schuler family Claire desperately races against time to find the madman before he uses the lethal pesticide again. But he won’t be stopped. Not until he gets what he wants. The truth must be told. Or more will die. The flowers and the birds were only the beginning. . . . Written with Mary Logue’s trademark power and compassion, Bone Harvest is a bold, brilliant thriller that carries the reader deep into the heart of the Wisconsin bluffs country, into the hearts of its people—and to a startling conclusion.

Fall comes to Pepin County with a vengeance as Deputy Sheriff Claire Watkins confronts a new evil festering beneath the placid surface of the Wisconsin farm community. A refugee from the Twin Cities, Claire has slowly adapted to small-town life–especially now that she loves and lives with Rich Haggard. But in this rural area, other folks are dangerously restless. One is Daniel Reiner, a wealthy part-time resident who’s been buying up too much land–at least as far as the locals are concerned. Another is gambling addict and aging gold digger Patty Jo Tilde, who recently married a widower twenty years her senior. Patty is itching to inherit her husband’s property, sell it to Reiner, and leave the countryside behind. The only stumbling block–her husband must die. Add to the mix a suspicious goat-herding daughter-in-law and a wounded elk, and things quickly reach a boiling point. As Claire Watkins delves deeper into the mystery, she believes she’s uncovered a deadly history of lies, deceit, arson, and poison. Her problem is to prove it–and then she learns what happened to Patty Jo’s last husband. . . . Evoking the strong community values and the natural beauty of the Mississippi River Valley, this new Claire Watkins novel is Logue’s most exciting yet. Poison Heart is a riveting tale of those who live off the land–and those who end up six feet under it.

Claire Watkins investigates after her daughter's friend, Krista Jorgenson, is found dead at the foot of Maiden Rock after an all-night Halloween party.

The seventh book in the Claire Watkins mystery series. Deputy Sheriff Claire Watkins is faced with a difficult case when a friend of the family is suspected of killing his wife. Her investigation puts a great stress on her relationship with her husband. Things are further strained when the suspect attempts suicide, solidifying his guilt in Claire s mind. But what if she s wrong?

Book eight in the Claire Watkins mystery series finds car mogul Daniel Walker celebrating New Year's Eve alone, roasting in his sauna. At midnight he runs outside for a quick roll in the snow . . . and the next morning he's found dead—naked, frozen, and covered in snow. While solving this midwinter crime, Claire realizes how tenuous love is and how frozen she's been since the death of her first husband. Mary Logue is an award-winning poet and mystery writer. She has taught for many years at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis and at Hamline University in St. Paul.

"Logue writes beautifully about rural Minnesota life while telling a good mystery. For fans of J.A. Jance and Margaret Maron." -- Library Journal Deputy Sheriff Claire Watkins has had an easy summer in Fort St. Antoine, Wisconsin; the only problem is that her daughter Meg is leaving for college soon. When Claire walks down to the park to watch the Burning Boat--a large replica of a Norwegian longboat set on the shores of Lake Pepin, burned at the autumnal equinox--she has no idea that more than just a wooden structure is going up in flames. The next day, the bones of a young woman are found in the ashes. When Claire learns that the new deputy she has hired, a vet returning from Afghanistan, was the young woman's former boyfriend, and that he is now dating her daughter Meg, she is desperate to find out who is responsible for the death. In order to get to the heart of this mystery, Claire must understand what happened in an attack in the mountains of Afghanistan, which left one man wounded, one man killed, and one man disturbed. Could one of those two remaining men be the killer?