Trophies and Dead Things by Marcia Muller

I do like Muller's stuff - and her titles. The "trophies and dead things" are from a poem by John Webster - a seventeenth century poet I'd never heard of. The connection is both symbolic and concrete - although the concrete is kind of out there. It does serve to give a sense of the true perversity of the central bad guy. He creates what he calls fetishes from the remains of dead birds and animals which he finds - fairly sick stuff. It may also be a reference to the futility of his attempt to create an image which will hide his true nature.

The roots of the mystery are again in the past - this time in the war protests of the sixties - certainly a period with enough comfusion and uncertainty to generate a mystery or two. In the cast we have some who served, some who ran to Canada, some who questioned, some who didn't, and some who were damaged beyond recovery. At the heart of it all - guilt on the part of those who were innocent and lack of guilt on the part of the truly guilty.

And - uncharacteristically for Muller - two separate "crimes" which only seem to be related. Usually it's the other way around - two seemingly unrelated crimes which turn out to be linked.