Cerulean Skies

A botanist is murdered just as he is about to reveal an important discovery, leading Rein Connery on a chase through university hallways and Michigan’s northern wilderness to bring the professor’s killers to justice. The slain botanist is Curtis Jameson, and his newfound discovery is a species rose with blue-petaled potential, one he calls Cerulean Skies. Curt’s old high school friends are Rein Connery—now a Detroit homicide detective—and Paula Wrenfrew, a fellow botany professor. The university is the fictitious Michigan University in Lansing, and the northern wilderness is the very real Sylvania near Watersmeet.

A short synopsis for Cerulean Skies:

For the past decade, Dr. Curtis Jameson’s colleagues at Michigan University have been trying to develop a blue rose through genetic manipulation. Dr. Mary Lorrie has been heading the project, and she continues to do so until Curt stumbles onto something that could make all of the work she has done thus far irrelevant. What he has found is a new species rose which is believed to have blue-making genes in its ovaries.

Dr. Paula Keao Wrenfrew, a Hawaiian-American botany professor, is Curt’s best friend. Rein Connery, also a friend of Curt’s, is a Detroit homicide detective who’s been in love with Paula since high school. Even though Paula elected to marry Al Wrenfrew seven years ago, Al’s infidelity and compulsive gambling have encouraged her to rethink the relationship she once had with Rein.

Curtis decides to take Rein and Paula to Michigan’s western Upper Peninsula to find more of the roses. On the way, three men murder him and eventually steal his plant samples, notes, and the satellite navigator marking the area where the wild roses are known to be thriving. Rein kills one of the men but the other two, later identified as Corey D’Angelo and Vladimir Haas, get away.

Daniel Burrins, the C. E. O. of Kertex Pharmaceuticals, has been funding Curtis’s trips as an ethnobotanist. Curt’s job for the company has been to find new plants to be analyzed for medicinal purposes. After Curt misled Kertex into believing that the rose plant he’d found was useless, they relented and sold him the rights to it. Needless to say, many powerful people at the company now regret that decision.

Detective Rein Connery and Paula (who is an expert on North American vegetation and wildlife as well as a proficient navigator) decide to finish the journey that Curt had started by going on a backpack excursion through the Sylvania Wilderness to find the wild rose on their own. Rose plants recovered from Curt’s mother’s house make the trip less of a priority, but Paula insists on going. The trip had been Curt’s last wish.

While alone in the wilderness, it’s hard for Rein not to be attracted to Paula after all these years. Finding a certain peace while cohabiting with nature, Rein and Paula become as enamored by the wildlife they encounter as they are with one another. Soon Paula realizes that she must choose between Rein and her husband Al.