The Wooden Lure Secret
A Mystery

About this book:

Arthur Pendelton doesn't just appraise vintage fishing lures—he reads them like crime scenes. In his quiet Michigan shop, the scent of linseed oil and cedar masks a forensic mind that spots a hand-filed screw slot from twenty paces and dates a varnish by its ultraviolet fingerprint. When a rusted oak box yields a pristine August Finch minnow worth thousands, Arthur's expertise confirms its authenticity. But his penlight reveals something Finch never intended: a hollow cavity where the lead ballast should be, harboring a secret wrapped in iron wire. The legendary carver built a vault, not a lure—and Silas Higgins, the late game warden who hid it beneath his floorboards, knew exactly what lay inside.

What begins as a routine authentication spirals into a covert investigation where every collector is a suspect and every antique a potential lie. From the whispered legends of Whispering Pines to a midnight auction where provenance is currency, Arthur and gruff estate liquidator Ned Miller trace a trail of dead carvers, living forgers, and a decades-old conspiracy that someone has killed to keep submerged. The deeper they cast, the clearer it becomes: the most valuable thing in that tackle box isn't the wood, the paint, or even the gold leaf. It's the truth someone went to extraordinary lengths to sink.

Atmospheric, technically precise, and hooked around a premise as unique as a hand-carved Finch plug, *The Wooden Lure Secret* reels you into a world where folk art meets forensic science, and the past never stays buried. For readers who love their mysteries steeped in craft, history, and the cold, clear waters of northern Michigan—set the hook.