This is the first Robyn Devara mystery. Robyn is a field biologist specializing in birds. She works for a consulting firm in Calgary but in this first book she has been sent to Central BC to investigate a sighting of a spotted owl. Spotted owls are an endangered specie and if they are present in this area then the logging industry would be curtailed. Since the Seidlin Lumber Company is the biggest employer in town this would be a setback for a lot of townspeople. Thus Robyn is hoping to keep a low profile, do her owl survey quick and get out of town before anyone knows she was there. Unfortunately on her second outing she stumbles across the body of a murdered logger and her secret is out. The police ask her not to leave town and they are treating Robyn as a suspect. Fortunately her co-worker, and secret romantic interest, Kelt Roberson is sent to give her a hand. Although their romance doesn't progress very far they do work well together and they get some assistance from Jaime Cardinal, the local who reported the spotted owl, and some other people.

I didn't figure out the murderer until close to the end and that was really because I had read the next book in this series and had some inside knowledge. There is lots of interesting information about owls (like a group of owls is called a parliament) and logging. This book was published in 1998 and since that time the BC forest industry has had some hard times with pine beetle infestations and American tariffs.

Ms Dudley knows her biology/ornithology and writes convincingly about that. Her plot was pretty good for a first attempt and having read her next two books (Red Heron and Macaws of Death) I can say that this aspect gets better I think. ( )