What is new for Northwoods Drifter in 2026
After 40 years of turning Northwoods lakes and pine forests into crime scenes, Rhinelander’s Victoria Houston has written her final mystery.
“The Wolves are Watching: A Lew Ferris Mystery” marks the likely conclusion to a remarkable literary career that transformed a hometown girl’s teenage troubles into 23 mystery novels celebrating the region she once couldn’t wait to leave.
For readers who’ve followed Police Chief Llewellyn Ferris and retired dentist Doc Osborne through decades of fictional crimes in Loon Lake, the news feels like the end of summer — bittersweet, inevitable, but leaving behind something worth remembering.
Houston’s path to becoming one of Wisconsin’s most prolific mystery writers started with what she calls “a lot of trouble in high school.”
She and friends used a master key to enter Rhinelander High School after hours. When one of them stole from the building, rumors spiraled out of control.
“Telling people how I’m probably running a sex ring,” Houston recalls with a laugh. “Which was actually rather amazing because at that point in my life I hadn’t even been kissed.”
The experience wounded her deeply. It also fueled her determination to leave. She earned a full scholarship to Bennington College in Vermont and built a career far from the Northwoods — working as an art critic, helping expose political corruption in Missouri, and managing PR for authors and cartoonists.
That hometown she fled would eventually become her greatest creative asset. But first, she had to figure out how to write fiction.
Houston broke into publishing through nonfiction, including Loving a Younger Man, a book inspired by her second marriage that became successful enough to put three kids through private college.
But she noticed something: the one mystery author at her publishing house was getting bigger advances than nonfiction writers.
“I thought ‘Oh, there must be more money in murders. Let’s give it a try.'”
She spent a year writing her first mystery manuscript. Her agent’s response was brutal: “This is so bad. Don’t even show this to someone who loves you.”
Most writers would’ve quit. Houston enrolled in a New York writing workshop instead.
She read mysteries voraciously. She kept writing. But something still wasn’t clicking until she had a realization that changed everything.
“It’s not going to work to set a mystery in Kansas City or Connecticut,” Houston remembers thinking. “You’re from Rhinelander, set your story in the world you know.”
The fictional town of Loon Lake emerged from memories, landscapes, and people Houston had known growing up. Police Chief Llewellyn Ferris, retired dentist Doc Osborne, and fishing guide Ray Pradt became her trio of crime-solvers, navigating murders against a backdrop of fly fishing, muskie angling, and small-town Wisconsin life.
Her love of fishing — which began at age three and resumed seriously in adulthood — gave the novels authentic texture that readers recognized immediately.
“You and the eagle and the birds and maybe a few brook trout jumping out of the water,” she says of time on Northwoods streams. “It’s good for the soul.”
Houston’s decision to return to Rhinelander after 30 years away and build her literary career around the region created something valuable beyond book sales.
She proved that Northwoods stories matter — that this landscape and these communities deserve space in American crime fiction alongside New York brownstones and California noir.
Readers across the country now associate northern Wisconsin with her fictional Loon Lake, much like they connect the Boundary Waters with William Kent Krueger’s Cork O’Connor series.
After four decades as a full-time writer, Houston is ready for something different. Summers back in Rhinelander without deadlines. Time on the water without needing to turn every fishing trip into research.
“It took me a while to find my way, about 25 years or so,” she says. “But I got there.”
The Wolves are Watching is available now in both eBook and paperback formats. For readers new to Houston’s work, Dead Angler remains the natural starting point — the book that introduced Loon Lake and established the rhythms of Northwoods mystery that would sustain 22 more novels.
Her books sit on shelves at independent bookstores throughout northern Wisconsin, where locals recognize the landmarks disguised behind fictional names and tourists discover a literary trail through the region.
Houston’s story reminds us that sometimes the place you need to leave is also the place you need to return to. The teenager who caused trouble in Rhinelander became the writer who celebrated it, transforming a complicated relationship with home into art that will outlast any rumor.
That’s worth more than any advance check.
Written by
Mike has been coming up or living in the Northwoods since his childhood. He is also an avid outdoorsman, writer and supper club aficionado.
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