Bad Optics (Wood Cop Mystery) - Hardcover

Joseph Heywood has long been a red-blooded American original and an author worth reading. With Red Jacket--a colorful and sprawling new novel with a terrific new protagonist named Lute Bapcat--he raises the bar to soaring new heights.--C.J. Box, New York Times bestselling author of Force of Nature

Joseph Heywood writes with a voice as unique and rugged as Michigan's Upper Peninsula itself.--Steve Hamilton, Edgar(R) Award-winning author of The Lock Artist

Taut and assured writing that hooked me from the start. Every word builds toward the ending, and along the way some of the writing took my breath away.--Kirk Russell, author of Dead Game and Redback

Heywood has crafted an entertaining bunch of characters. An absorbing narrative twists and turns in a setting ripe for corruption.--Dallas Morning News

Top-notch action scenes, engaging characters both major and minor, masterful dialogue, and a passionate sense of place make this a fine series.--Publishers Weekly

Well written, suspenseful, and bleakly humorous while moving as quickly as a wolf cutting through the winter woods. In addition to strong characters and . . . compelling romance, Heywood provides vivid, detailed descriptions of the wilderness and the various procedures and techniques of conservation officers and poachers.... Highly recommended.--Booklist

[A] tightly written mystery/crime novel . . . that offers a nice balance between belly laughs, head-scratching plot lines, and the real grit of modern police work.--Petersen's Hunting

In 1913, Theodore Roosevelt recruits former Rough Rider Lute Bapcat to become a game warden on Michigan's Upper Peninsula in Heywood's absorbing first in a new series. Outsized characters, both real (athlete George Gipp before his Notre Dame fame, union organizer Mother Jones) and fictional (randy businesswoman Jaquelle Frei; Lute's Russian companion, Pinkhus Sergeyevich Zakov), pepper the narrative.--Publishers Weekly

Heywood mixes history--the [miners'] strike and the violence it engenders, culminating with the Christmas Eve Italian Hall Disaster in Calumet, Michigan, in which 73 died--with vivid characterizations in a . . . promising series opener.--Booklist

Heywood is a master of his form.--Detroit Free Press

Joseph Heywood is the author of The Snowfly, Covered Waters, The Berkut, Taxi Dancer, The Domino Conspiracy, the ten previous Woods Cop Mysteries, Hard Ground: Woods Cop Stories, Harder Ground, and the Lute Bapcat Mysteries Red Jacket and Mountains of the Misbegotten. Featuring Grady Service, a contemporary detective in the Upper Peninsula for Michigan's Department of Natural Resources, and Lute Bapcat, a Rough Rider turned Michigan game warden in the 1910s, Heywood's mystery series have earned the author cult status among lovers of the outdoors, law enforcement officials, and mystery devotees. Heywood lives in Portage, Michigan.