Bearwalker Alibi

Does evil have rights? Can an old Ojibwa myth be accepted as a defense in a murder trial on Ontario's Manitoulin Island? Dead is a sleazy young German man who came to Manitoulin to distribute Ecstasy to Great Lakes cities in the U.S. He fled Germany and his ties to Biker and Drug cultures rather than testify in a gang trial in Dresden. Interpol wants him. He lives with his uncle who is building a pow-wow hotel on the island for German wannabe Indians.

The only witness is Dr. Mary Fraser, Canada's ranking expert on native symbols and an Ojibwa herself. She bloodied her hands when she failed to stop the murder.

Drawn back to Manitoulin to recover her childhood identity, she ends up in a forensic psych hospital, unable to recall who's responsible.

Her live-in-lover, Fergus Fitzgerald, an aging draft dodger from Boston, would rather drink good scotch than get involved but in the end seeks his own redemption. He uses his reporter instincts to flush out the real killer. His real adversary is a holier-than-thou Crown Attorney who thinks Mary herself is possessed.

Tying all this together is the ancient Bearwalker myth of a large black bear, believed by some Ojibwa to be capable of taking on human form and uttering lethal curses.