Longtime residents recall with dismay the disastrous festival decades earlier, when another woman died and a valuable sixteenth-century instrument-the fabled yellow viol-vanished, never to be found.Ĭubiak follows a trail of murder, kidnapping, and false identity that leads back to the calamitous night of the twin tragedies. The jubilant mood sours when an unidentified passenger is found dead on a ferry. Sheriff Dave Cubiak enjoys a rare day off as tourists and a documentary film crew hover around the musicians. It’s a sparkling August day on Washington Island and the resonant notes of early classical music float on the breeze toward the sailboats and ferries that ply the waters of Death’s Door strait.Īfter a forty-year absence, the Viola da Gamba Music Festival has returned to the picturesque isle on the tip of Wisconsin’s Door County peninsula. Amid broken dreams, corruption, and loss, he sorts out the truth. In a dark, moody tale that spans more than half a century and hopscotches across the peninsula, Cubiak encounters a host of suspects with motives for murder. Investigating, Cubiak discovers that the men's veneer of success and respectability hides an intricate web of lies, betrayal, and treachery. When one of the widows receives a message claiming the men 'got what they deserved,' he realizes that there may be more to the deaths than a simple accident. Three prominent World War II veterans, about to be honored for their military heroics, die from carbon monoxide poisoning during a weekly card game.īlame falls to a faulty heater but Cubiak puzzles over details. His newest challenge arrives as spring brings not new life but tragic death to the isolated fishing village of Gills Rock. She later wrote Death In Cold Water (2016), which was awarded the Edna Ferber Fiction Book Award by the Council for Wisconsin Writers.Ī member of the Authors Guild of America, Mystery Writers of America, and Society of Midland Authors, as well as a past-president of the Sisters in Crime Chicagoland Chapter, Skalka currently divides her time between Milwaukee and Door County, Wisconsin.Īfter tracking a clever killer in Death Stalks Door County, park ranger and former Chicago homicide detective Dave Cubiak is elected Door County sheriff.

She spent many years writing human interest and medical articles that are available in national print and online publications.įollowing an accomplished career in non-fiction, Skalka made the switch to fiction writing, where she made her debut in 2014 with Death Stalks Door County, the first installment of the Dave Cubiak Door County Mysteries.

Originally from Chicago, Illinois, Skalka is a former Reader’s Digest Staff Writer and freelancer. She is best known for writing the Dave Cubiak Door County Mystery Series. Patricia Skalka is an American freelancer, writing instructor, book reviewer and an award-winning author of mystery novels.

Death at Gills Rock by Patricia Skalka