I assume every adult child eventually reaches that moment when they realize they have become a parent to their parents. I’m there now. And it’s profoundly unsettling, let me tell you.
At least at this point, I only have my father to worry about. My mother, the beautiful and greatly missed Sara Roth was taken from us far too young. Mark Roth, Sara’s doting and hopelessly goofy widower, is now my father/child. I’m Stephanie Roth, new and extremely reluctant mother to a rapidly aging father.
The challenges?
Well, let’s start with the hundreds of square miles of trackless northern wilderness, one-and-a-half Great Lakes, and nine hours of dangerous northern highway between my home and my father’s. There’s only so much I can do for the clumsy old guy over the phone, and that’s when he bothers to listen to me. I’m getting very familiar with the local commuter airlines.
Add to that my father’s incorrigible nosiness and growing habit of inserting himself into other people’s problems. And when I say “problems,” I don’t mean he’s climbing ladders to fix a neighbor’s gutters. That would be worrisome enough. No, the problems I’m talking about involve dead bodies pulled from frigid rivers. Murders that look initially like accidents or simply the inevitable, final circumstance of anyone’s life.
These problems are, in fact, crimes. And my father has no damn business nosing around in crime.
I’m a professional criminologist, and even I don’t spend any time at crime scenes, in interrogation rooms, or trailing suspects. My life involves a seemingly endless series of seminars, teaching the basics of crime theory to bored and body-odored students; interrupted far too infrequently by distant academic conferences on obscure theories of criminal rehabilitation. My favorite moments are when I’m forced to put my phone on airplane-mode, and no-one can reach me with a question or problem for a few blissful hours.
Today is not one of those days. Instead, I’ve been at my desk in Thunder Bay, alternating between student appointments, grading essays, and talking my dad down from the ceiling of his remote cabin with a series of increasingly frantic phone calls. Not only is the old guy charging off in all directions to “solve” a murder, but a local bear seems to have taken a liking to the food smells coming from his shack.
“Father…”
“No worries! He didn’t make it through the door. Just did a bunch of damage and left a lot of poop everywhere. All good.”
“Scat, Father.”
“What’s that?”
“Bear poop is called scat.”
“I wish he’d scat, let me tell you.”
So, there you go. Time to rearrange my calendar and book a short-hop flight across Lake Superior. Apparently, I have a bear-damaged door to replace.
SELDOM SEEN ROAD
Series: A Burnt River Mystery, Book 1
Genre: Police Procedural
Release: May 2026
Format: Print, Digital
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Bookshop.org
Seldom Seen Road is the first in the Burnt River series of murder mysteries featuring the Roth family detective trio.
When the body of local environmental activist Paul Robichaud washes up on the bank of a river in the small northern town of Burnt River, blunt-force wounds to his head suggesting murder, Mark Roth is jarred out of his retirement reverie and drawn into the mystery. Who dumped Robichaud into the frigid spring run-off? Is there a connection between his death and both the largest uranium refinery in the world and the local small-time pot trade? How do Robichaud’s wife, Kim Keranen, daughter Algoma, local real estate developer Gillian Larch, and her pot-head son Bobby fit into the puzzle?
And who is The Albanian?
Mark Roth has the least solid claim on the art of solving murders, but he is driven by the insistent busybody nature of the recently retired. Profoundly hard-of-hearing after a career in musical performance, and equally disappointed with finding himself alone in his world after the death of his beloved wife, Mark stubbornly and clumsily puts himself in harm’s way to draw out the truth. Constable Jeremy Roth, Mark’s long-lost cousin, is the muscle of the group, patrolling the northern highways for the local police detachment and investigating on the ground. Mark’s beloved daughter, Stephanie, building her name as a criminologist at the university in Thunder Bay, gets to the details of the matter using her academic credentials and her innate puzzle-solving instincts.
Mark ignores all official advice and his own precarious health as he digs deep into the secrets of his new town. But the town is looking back at him—observing, plotting—and it may prove more than a match for Mark’s loved ones, and deadly to him.
Meet the author
John Degen is a poet and novelist with four published books and work in several anthologies. His debut novel, The Uninvited Guest, was shortlisted for the 2006 Amazon.ca First Novel Award. His latest novel is Seldom Seen Road (Latitude 46 Publishing, May 2026). He lives, works, and swims on the north shore of Lake Huron in Canada.