Book description
Things are never easy for Scottsdale private eye Lena Jones. Her
partner in Desert Investigations, Jimmy Siswan, is leaving for an
upscale wife and a job at Sun Microsystems. Her old Captain at the
Scottsdale PD is off home to Brooklyn. She's doing security for Warren
Quinn, director of a documentary being shot at Papago Park about the
German POW camp and the “great escape” of Christmas Eve, 1944, when some
prisoners tunneled out and fled. And one surviving escapee, Kapitan zur
Zee Erik Ernst, a man in his nineties confined to a wheelchair after a
boating accident, has just been murdered. Worse, his Ethiopian care
giver begs Lena to clear him. Lena, experienced in probing the past for
answers to the central mystery of her own life-who is she?-learns that
Ernst and two other POWs hid out in the rugged Superstitions. Nearby, on
Christmas night, a whole farm family, the Bollingers, was slaughtered. A
jury didn't convict the only survivor, the teenage son. What might Chess
Bollinger know about Ernst-and vice versa? And how much can Lena trust
Quinn, either as a client, a witness, or a lover? A complex, stunning
case based on real Arizona history, journalist Betty Webb, author of
Desert Noir, Desert Wives, and Desert Run, spins an evocative, haunting
story. Webb bases her latest Lena Jones adventure on a real episode in
Arizona history: the great escape of 25 Germans from Camp Papago, a POW
camp located between Phoenix and Scottsdale. Famous director Warren
Quinn is making a documentary about the escape, and Lena's firm, Desert
Investigations, is hired to handle security for the project. One of the
escaped POWs, Erik Ernst, still lives in Scottsdale and is starring in
the movie. When he is found murdered, Rada Tesema, his Ethiopian
caregiver, is immediately suspected. Rada pleads for Lena to help prove
him innocent, and she soon learns that Ernst had a huge number of
enemies, many of whom would have gladly seen him dead. Readers may
wonder why the brainy and beautiful Lena would begin dating whiny and
pedantic Warren, but that's the only slightly off note in an otherwise
fascinating adventure. As in the preceding episodes in the series, Webb
effectively evokes the beauty of the Arizona desert. Betty Webb is the
author of the acclaimed Lena Jones mystery series, which includes
“Desert Cut” and “Desert Wives.” A former Californian who once lived on
a boat, like the zookeeper protagonist of “The Anteater of Death,” Betty
now lives in landlocked Arizona, where she volunteers at the Phoenix
Zoo. She also teaches Creative Writing at Phoenix College and is a
member of the National Association of Press Women, Mystery Writers of
America, and the Authors Guild.
