Dean Hovey is a Minnesota-based author with three mystery series. He lives with his wife south of Duluth.
Dean’s award-winning* Pine County series follows sheriff’s deputies Floyd Swenson and Pam Ryan through this police procedural series.
Dean’s Whistling Pines books are humorous cozy mysteries centered on the residents of the Whistling Pines senior residence. The protagonist is Peter Rogers, the Whistling Pines recreation director.
In Dean’s latest series his protagonist, a retired Minnesota policeman, is drafted into service as a National Park Service Investigator after a murder at a National Monument.
* “Family Trees: A Pine County Mystery” won the 2018 NEMBA award for best fiction.
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Doug Fletcher Mystery Series The Doug Fletcher series follows Doug and his wife Jill, investigators for the U.S. Park Service as they’re assigned to investigate mysterious deaths in national parks and monuments across the United States.
The Last Rodeo A champion barrel racer disappears from her trailer on the eve of the Black Hills Roundup. Two hundred miles away, female remains are discovered at the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument. Doug and Jill Fletcher, assigned to investigate the crime at the national monument, quickly determine that the remains are the missing rodeo champion. Thrust into the unfamiliar world of calf ropers, bull riders, and barrel racers, they team up with the Belle Fourche police to investigate the murder. A trucker reports seeing a ghost driving the victim’s pickup across Montana the night of the murder. Other witnesses report seeing a rodeo clown near her trailer. Fletchers locate the victim’s stolen pickup and horse trailer, but not her horse. The evidence seems to point to horse theft as the motive, but the complicated reports of ghosts and rodeo clowns leaves them feeling that there’s more to the crime than a simple horse theft.
![]() When a local rancher’s body is discovered in Tuzigoot National Monument, Doug and Jill Fletcher are dispatched to investigate the suspicious death. Horseshoe prints where the body was found point the investigation toward the dozens of local ranches and trail ride companies.The clues lead the Fletchers into Cottonwood, a nearby tourist town with a blossoming wine tasting industry. It quickly becomes apparent that the victim was a bed-hopping cowboy, who has left behind a string of scorned women and angry husbands. While riding along the Verde River in search of clues, Doug and Jill are befriended by Gunner, a young cowboy who’d been injured in a rodeo accident. Socially inept and somewhat slow, Gunner sees things that others overlook. His daily rides around Tuzigoot made him a reluctant witness to much of what happened following the murder.Despite slowly developing confidence in his horsemanship, Doug is forced to ride “Lightning” when their prime suspect flees on horseback. He and Lightning follow, as Jill gallops off in pursuit of their murder suspect. The chase turns into a scene from a Wild West movie when the fleeing cowboy fires his six-shooter at his pursuers.
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The investigation quickly focuses on Barlett’s tire recapping business in the tiny town of Askov. The workers, all parolees from the nearby Federal Prison, are wary of the interviewing deputies, and are less than forthcoming. Roger’s widow seems upset, but she is the biggest beneficiary of Bartlett’s death, so a prime suspect. His partner was in Las Vegas at the time of the shooting, but his past criminal record is suspicious. As Sgt. C.J. Jensen and Investigator Pam Conrad dig, they develop a long list of suspects, all with alibis for the time of the shooting. Consulting with recently retired Sgt. Floyd Swenson, Pam and C.J. sift through layers of lies and misdirection until they uncover the motive and confront the killer.
After days of hitting dead ends at every turn, Doug decides to take a step back. A conversation with a local resident makes them reconsider a motive they’d previously discounted. Ignoring a “No Trespassing” sign, the Fletchers pulls into a rural driveway and find themselves staring into a shotgun muzzle.
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It’s ev Thrust into the unfamiliar South Beach culture, the Fletchers work with a reluctant park service associate and the Miami/Dade forensics team to identify the victim. Once identified, they unravel a complicated attempt at misdirection to track down her killer.
Watching a pair of eerie lights rise over the park has them questioning their eyes. The assistance of an Air Force UFO expert, Doug’s ex-wife (an archaeology professor), and ghostly apparitions walking the river bluffs in the moonlight contribute more questions than answers. The eerie sights and clues create a confusing mix of Native traditions, aliens, and UFOs. Joined by a Navajo Nation Police colleague, they pull apart the threads of diversion and get to the root of the problem.
Doug and Jill Fletcher are dispatched to the Black Hills when a missing camper’s mutilated body is discovered in a remote part of Wind Cave National Park. Jill searches remote portions of Wind Cave for the victim’s missing companion while Doug tries to determine their identities. The park investigation revelations pull them into a local crime and put their lives at risk. A prairie blizzard brings everything in Western South Dakota to a stop as the pieces of the mysteries start to fall into place. The stay at Jill’s family ranch takes an unexpected turn when Doug’s mother is invited for Christmas.
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Whistling Pines Series The Whistling Pines books are humorous cozies set in a northern Minnesota senior citizen’s residence. Peter Rogers is the protagonist and is the Whistling Pines recreation director who is dragged into each investigation by his friend, the local police chief. The plots are murder mysteries intertwined with the zany antics of the senior citizens who are a mixture of sane, smart elders and confused rumormongers. The series has a recurring cast of characters, each with his/her quirks.
After Deborah Evenson’s death, her paintings are gathered for a retrospective showing at a Duluth art museum. During the opening night gala, the museum discovers that two of the paintings, previously displayed separately, were created as a diptych/mural. Close inspection of the complicated pieces reveals hidden images hinting at the rocky relationship between Evenson and her rich benefactor. Peter Rogers, the Whistling Pines Recreation Director, is dragged into a controversy when a local art studio hosts a drawing class for a group of his residents. Moving from drawings of fruit, the class shifts to nudes, a decision that brings a group of protesters to the studio. The slightly inebriated art instructor confronts the religious protesters, spritzing them with booze. To avoid the unfolding protest, Peter takes the art class to the Duluth art museum where they discover another hidden image in Evenson’s mural. Does this image explain the disappearance of an art professor who’d been posing for Evenson, or is it just a feature in the abstract painting?
A celebrity chef brings his world-famous cooking show to Two Harbors for a special broadcast. The news quickly spreads that the show is looking for ethnic recipes, the winning submissions to be prepared during the live broadcast. The residents of Whistling Pines Senior Residence decide to join the recipe competition, creating a massive number of entries, with heated discussion about the “proper” preparation of ethnic favorites. A local baker is murdered before submitting her award-winning recipes to the cooking show. Police Chief Stone enlists the help of his friend Peter, the Whistling Pines Recreation Director, to assist with the investigation. With snowflakes swirling outside, the four winners prepare their recipes, the audience prompted to ooh and aah over each dish. The final recipe is one of the celebrity chef’s childhood favorites, but a mishap during the preparation abruptly ends the broadcast. Is the incident related to the baker’s murder?
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Taking a break from the gift opening party, they tune in to a live news broadcast and watch the historical society president open a time capsule found during demolition of the band shell. The opening ceremony turns grim when a rusty pistol and a newspaper clipping about an old murder are revealed. The Whistling Pines rumor mill runs amok as the retired residents offer up murder motives, stories about the victim’s checkered past, and a multitude of potential murderers. Despite his full-time job as Whistling Pines recreation director, Peter gets dragged into the time capsule murder investigation. Jenny’s son, Jeremy, is convinced their new house is haunted when boxes jump from shelves, a radio turns itself on, Christmas stockings appear under the fireplace mantle, wedding gifts rise eerily out of boxes, and ghostly events interrupt their sleep. They start to ask themselves if the house is a gift or a curse…until the ghost is revealed.
Pine County Mysteries series The Pine County series is set in a rural northeastern Minnesota. The protagonists are Pine County deputy sheriffs, the recurring characters include Sergeant Floyd Swenson and Deputy Pam Ryan. Family Trees, (Pine county book 6) was the winner of the NEMBA (Northeastern Minnesota Book Award) award for best fiction. Pine county is 1,400 sq. miles, with hundreds of lakes, swamps, rivers and streams. Previous books investigated the death of a teacher who’d been “dating”his female students, skeletal remains of a teen missing since the 1970’s, and a crime revealed when film in a garage sale camera is developed.
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