Joseph Heywood Books in Order

Captain Barney South, the first ace of the Vietnam air war, has survived ninety dangerous missions and irritated plenty of superiors. With only ten flights left, he is offered a high-stakes special assignment and must decide whether it will make or destroy him.

In the shattered days after Berlin falls, Adolf Hitler escapes his bunker with a ruthless German colonel and a handful of loyalists. Soviet hunter Vasily Petrov and roguish American agent Beau Valentine join a relentless manhunt that crosses a ruined Europe.

Autumn 1960 finds Nikita Khrushchev under attack from hard-liners while a rogue CIA operative pursues a private war. Called out of retirement, Beau Valentine must track the renegade across Europe as conspirators scheme to topple leaders on both sides of the Cold War.

Journalist and expert fly fisherman Bowie Rhodes grows up hearing rumors of the snowfly, a ghostly white insect that lures impossible trout to the surface. His search for a lost manuscript about the fly pulls him through Vietnam, the Cold War, and his own tangled past.

Grady Service, a hard-edged conservation officer in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, learns that the vicious head of a poaching clan is being released from prison just as suspicious fires and a killing rock his beloved Mosquito Wilderness. Following a trail of ash and rumor, he uncovers a threat far bigger than one outlaw family.

After bombings and protests at a wolf research facility end in a double murder, a rare blue-coated wolf escapes into the Upper Peninsula backcountry. Grady Service must untangle politics, tribal beliefs, and a ruthless poaching ring before the animal becomes both trophy and omen.

Something is wrong with the black bears of the north woods, and strange deaths follow in their wake. When a professor is poisoned with figs laced with cyanide and bear gall bladders, Grady Service chases an organized wildlife-parts trade and meets a son he never knew existed.

In this collection of autobiographical essays, Heywood traces a lifetime of fishing and wandering, from Cold War Air Force days to remote trout streams close to home. Reflections on family, risk, and wild water sit beside funny, sharply observed fishing tales.

Set a quarter century before the early Woods Cop novels, Running Dark follows a young Grady Service fresh from Vietnam. Sent to enforce fish and game laws in a stretch called the Garden, he walks into a guerrilla-style conflict that could end his career or his life.

After a season of brutal murders targeting conservation officers across several states, Grady Service learns the killer has taken his own girlfriend and son. Grief-stricken but relentless, he joins a multi-state manhunt, trying to outthink a predator who understands the woods as well as he does.

When contaminated fish eggs begin turning up in high-priced caviar, Service is pulled into a case that runs from remote rivers to state offices. Exposing the ring behind the tainted roe means challenging corrupt officials, organized crime, and colleagues who may be on the take.

The discovery of old bones in the Upper Peninsula uncovers an eighty-year-old story of racism, gold, and murder. At the same time, a modern ecoterrorist sets savage traps called wolf trees and a meth trade flourishes, forcing Grady Service to confront danger from every direction.

In 2007 Michigan is cutting budgets and hollowing out the Department of Natural Resources just as a strange problem called “bleeding sand” appears on the Lake Superior shore. With new partner Donna “Jingo” Sedge, Grady Service follows clues toward looted Native sites, wildfire, and shifting expectations in his aging career.

In 1913, former Rough Rider Lute Bapcat becomes one of Michigan’s first civil-service game wardens and is posted to the copper town of Red Jacket. As a violent labor strike escalates, he investigates poisoned streams, slaughtered deer, and sabotage that seem aimed at starving miners off the land.

This story collection follows Michigan game wardens beyond Grady Service, capturing the daily grind and sudden violence of their work. From rookie patrols to drug-running at an Elvis campout, the tales mix dark humor, sharp dialogue, and cameos by both Service and future hero Lute Bapcat.

Two Native American girls are found savagely killed in a remote campground, and rumors of a legendary dogman spread through northern Michigan. Ordered to hunt the “monster,” Grady Service must separate folklore from human cruelty while tracking a very real, very dangerous killer in brutal country.

Sent to wild Ontonagon County to find a missing deputy warden, Lute Bapcat is ambushed and left for dead. His recovery leads him into the Trap Hills and Porcupine Mountains, where he uncovers a scheme to capture bears for profit and confronts an outlaw tied to his own past.

A companion to Hard Ground, this volume spotlights the women game wardens who patrol Michigan’s woods and waters. They chase poachers, drug smugglers, and violent offenders while also navigating suspicion inside a male-dominated profession, proving that the job demands grit more than size.

During Michigan’s frantic two-week firearm deer season, Grady Service reluctantly teams up with notorious poacher Limpy Allerdyce. What should be routine enforcement turns into a string of bizarre, deadly deer cases that expose how obsession with antlers can twist ethics, loyalty, and the law.

After closing a wave of major deer cases with Limpy Allerdyce as his unofficial partner, Grady Service is suspended and stripped of badge and truck. Convinced politics are at work, he keeps patrolling on his own and uncovers a push to commercialize his beloved Mosquito Wilderness.

These linked stories roam across Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, introducing small-town cops, veterans, drifters, and oddballs who could have stepped out of a Woods Cop novel. New detectives John Clash and Nayar Sekhar tackle mysteries that show how life “above the bridge” is both harsh and quietly funny.

A year after fellow warden Pinkhus Zakov vanishes on a secret mission to Russia, Lute Bapcat and his young friend Jordy are summoned by former president Theodore Roosevelt. Sent into a country torn by revolution and civil war, they cross frozen rivers and battle lines in search of Zakov and a missing tsar.

Built around the voice of master poacher Limpy Allerdyce, this irreverent lexicon collects crude jokes, regional slang, and backwoods wisdom. It reads like a rowdy field guide to Yooper talk, lawbreakers, and the uncompromising country that shapes them.

Older now but still stubborn, Grady Service goes undercover once more, this time inside a murky religious-nationalist group operating in his state. Unsure whether he is facing true extremists or a crooked moneymaking scheme, he has to trust his instincts while his own agency keeps him at arm’s length.