'Dark Woods' alive with Sasquatch

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"The Sasquatch started coming and then stopped. It couldn't fit its shoulders into the opening. It was too big! It shifted and thrust a massive arm at him. He watched the thick fingers crawl forward; yellow fingernails clawed at the wood ..."

We normally don't review books that aren't based on real life and facts, such as how to fish, where to hunt, or where one might find the best barbecued ribs. However, in the case of Jay Kumar's "Dark Woods" ($6.99, Berkley Mass Market Original, paperback, New York, N.Y., penguin.com) it's easy to depart from the standard routine.

In his regular life, Kumar is the founder and president of BassFan.com, one of the most popular bass tournament fishing Web sites ever. How this busy man found time to write a bite-your-nails novel, I'll never now.

But here you have the hero, Skokum County, Wash., sheriff's deputy and recreational hunter Frank Vaughn, finding a deer that looked as if it had been ripped apart by a leaf shredder. Later he finds the torn body of another hunter. Now add the dark, wet, fern-sodden forests of the Pacific Northwest and the sudden, terrifying roar of something whose sound Vaughn believes to be the elusive Sasquatch — Bigfoot himself — and away we go.

Kumar makes sure the story maintains a brisk pace for the most part. There is a soon-to-be protagonist and seasoned hunter, Chris Mackey, who happens to be in Washington's high country to dispel rumors that Sasquatch exists because he works for Carolina Pacific Lumber Co.

You can imagine what will happen to their tree-cutting if an actual Sasquatch is discovered. The Fish & Wildlife Service would move in, declare Bigfoot an endangered species and the lumber business will slide down the drain. Bummer!

By the time I'd read half of "Dark Woods," I began to believe there really are such creatures — daddy Sasquatches, mommies, kiddies — whole families of them — with the males in particular smelling worse than the gorilla house in a zoo but a cousin to homo sapiens all the same.

OK, OK, so you've heard that there's no Bigfoot. But are you certain?

I didn't want the book to end, which for me is a sure sign of a gripping novel.