It’s generally a pleasure for me to read novels set on my home turf. Not only do I enjoy being able to visualize known locations as I follow the story, but for some reason I have a childish conviction that places are somehow validated, made more interesting, because they’ve been laminated between the covers of a book.

There was lots of that for me in Deadly Stillwater, by Roger Stelljes. The action ranges around eastern Minnesota and western Wisconsin, but most of it happens in the Twin Cities, and the climax is set near Stillwater, just to the east.

The hero is Mac McRyan, a St. Paul police detective. As one of the police chief’s “boys,” a decorated group of smart and effective cops, he’s called in from a vacation day (this all takes place over the Fourth of July holiday) when Shannon Hisle, daughter of one of the city’s most prominent—and wealthy—attorneys, is kidnapped. There’s added urgency because Shannon is a Type 1 diabetic. The police are already going all out when the criminals up the ante—they kidnap the police chief’s daughter as well. These are smart and organized villains who plan with military precision. It will take hard work, some luck, and a lot of ruthlessness to save the girls and bring a very motivated gang to justice.

I can say good and bad things about Deadly Stillwater. On the positive side, I thought the plotting was excellent. Author Stelljes mystifies us in the first half of the story, then reveals just enough information around the middle to show us how much worse the real situation is than we feared. I turned pages with real fascination and horror.

On the other hand, the writing is technically not very successful. The author’s use of words is often trite and sometimes unintentionally funny, as when we read, “Mac felt a cool, analytical wave wash over his body,” as if logic was a kind of emotional rush. Or when we’re told that Mac had “a broad small smile on his face….” Broad and small?

The characterization isn’t very good either. Stelljes wants to give us a colorful band of foul-mouthed cops, something another Minnesota crime writer, John Sandford, does very well. Unfortunately, dirty talk is not entertaining in itself. There’s got to be some actual wit involved to make it amusing, which is not the case here. No doubt this banal obscenity is closer to real life than what we read in Sandford, but it’s part of the job to entertain your reader.

Also the characters need to have actual character. All the members of the detective group with whom Mac works are physically different, but when they talk they’re almost indistinguishable. None of them really comes to life as somebody who might exist outside the story.

One thing that intrigued me was what I might term a “Guantanamo moment,” when the cops cross the lines of proper procedure and constitutional limitations to get necessary information from a very bad guy. These sorts of scenes seem to show up more and more often in crime fiction, and they intrigue me. Could it be that, in spite of lip service paid to suspects’ rights, most readers (even liberal ones) find comfort in the belief that, if they were really in danger, the cops would throw the human rights book out in order to save them? And if so, what are the implications of that?

All that said, the bottom line is that Stelljes kept me turning pages, and that’s worth something. The price is low for the e-book, so make your own buying decision.

Cautions for language, violence, and a fairly explicit sex scene that really didn’t do much to advance the story.