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Desert Wind

A Lena Jones Mystery
by Betty Webb
. 978-1-59058-979-3. M
COPY ISBN
When her PI partner, Pima Indian Jimmy Sisiwan, asks Lena Jones (Desert Lost) to stay out of a case involving his family living on the Arizona-Utah border, she naturally ignores him. Jimmy's brother, Ted, has been jailed in connection with the murder of a local resort's media relations guy. Unnervingly, this crime is tenuously connected to the earlier death of Ted's community activist wife. The narrative flips back and forth from the present day to 1954, when John Wayne filmed in nearby Snow Canyon, UT, an area especially vulnerable to fallout from that era's nuclear testing in Nevada. Lena discovers a cancer pandemic and thinks she has stumbled into a powder keg situation. And she's right.
VERDICT Webb's compelling exposé of the damage done to nuclear fallout victims (known as downwinders), accompanied by research notes and bibliography, makes for fascinating reading, despite a disappointing denouement. Sue Grafton's alphabet series is a prime read-alike for this series; also consider Pari Noskin Taichert and Steven Havill for Tony Hillerman influences. [See Prepub Alert, 11/14/11.]
Reviewed by Teresa L. Jacobsen , Jan 01, 2012
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