Boy Must Die, The

A fourteen-year-old boy has been found hanged and mutilated in the basement of
Satan House. It's the second life the derelict mansion has claimed. The work
of a brutal predator? A curse? Or a ritual cult murder? The boy's death shocks
parents in the Alberta city of Lethbridge, and police chief Eddy "Butch"
Bochansky knows there will be reprisals. Trying to ward off panic, he
persuades his old high school buddy, Billy Yamamoto, to act as a deputy
detective and hunt down the killer. Recently returned to the plains, Billy's
just buried his own father and taken over a ranch in the foothills, a five
hundred acre spread by Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump. Convinced he can assist
his old friend, Billy takes on his first murder case since retiring from the
Vancouver force, where for thirty years he worked in the homicide unit and
investigated organized crime. In Redfern's breathless thriller, the
unforgettable Yamamoto and his inherited team of local cops confront child
abuse, professional negligence, and racial intolerance while finding
connections between the boy and numerous "solid" Lethbridge citizens. Occult
activities, drugs, and secret teenage pacts intersect with the world of loan
sharks and smugglers as a small-town murder crosses the border and threatens
to become an international incident. And then another body is found. Sifting
through contradictory evidence, searching for a wholly unpredictable killer,
pushed to the hilt, somehow, Yamamoto realizes, the heist of priceless Native
artifacts from a U.S. burial site is the key. But can he unlock the mystery
before he himself dies?