Hopsquatch — Michael Newton

Hopsquatch is a modern mystery set against the background of Amerindian legend, cryptozoology (the search for "hidden" animals), and clashes mirrored in real-life headlines from the rural battlegrounds where tradition stands against the march of "progress," often with explosive results. On the eve of his hotly-contested reelection campaign in Cascade County, Oregon, Sheriff Jason Pruett finds himself in the midst of an unprecedented crime wave. The richest man in town has been murdered, neck broken by someone --or something --with extremely large, powerful hands. The victim, CEO of Cascade County's primary industry, leaves behind a marriage fraught with tension and a county torn by both political and racial animosity. Sheriff Pruett races against time to find the killer(s), while the victim's company --Paul Bunyan Logging --faces violent opposition from radical environmentalists and a tribe of Native Americans bent on preserving their homeland's virgin forest at all costs. To that end, a tribal shaman claims that he has conjured Omah, a vengeful nature spirit better known to Cascade County's white inhabitants as Sasquatch or Bigfoot. Sheriff Pruett is a skeptic, but as mayhem escalates around him, claiming other lives, he must follow every lead available to solve the crime and restore order.