In this fourth mystery of the Seaweed series, Victoria neighbourhood cop Silas Seaweed is as always sensitive to his Coast Salish culture, but when he's confronted by a ten-foot-tall bear on a marsh on the city's outskirts, he suspects that this is no creature from the unknown world but someone out to con him. And Silas is right, but his attempts to unmask the bear lead him into a labyrinth of blackmail and murder. Along the way he investigates a homeless people's sit-in at Beacon Hill Park, a burglary in the office of hypnotherapist Dr. Lawrence Trew, and the barely legal world of small-time hood Titus Silverman. And whenever Silas is not busy finding corpses, he's on the lookout for a missing artist and two eight-year-old runaways.

Now a full-time writer, Stanley Evans has been a soldier, a surveyor, and deep-sea fisherman. He once spent several months travelling up and down the Amazon and its tributaries. A former college instructor, he began his writing career in newspapers and magazines. He worked one season in Canada's Northwest Territories, as a crewman on the George Askew, one of Canada's last functioning paddlewheelers. Evans` hobbies are reading, carving wooden duck decoys, and conversation. He lives in Victoria.

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This is the fourth novel in the bright little Silas Seaweed series by Stanley Evans and it's as clever and sparkly as the first three. Evans' combination of light mystery and Salish mythology is fun.