Book description
“Say what you will about serial killers, some of them can really
write.” Some books have money written all over them. Not just books by
authors like the Death Row inmate at the Arizona State prison complex,
but books like Recreational Explosives and How to Build Them. Or Finding
Your Patriot Ancestors Through DNA Testing. Or Losing America. Yes,
Patriot's Blood has gone racist, its list making money from books that
play into the worst elements of society and its darkest behaviors. It's
no surprise there are plenty of suspects when Patriot's Blood publisher
Gloriana Alden-Taylor is poisoned at the annual Southwestern Book
Publishers Expo (SOBOP). But the hammer falls on just one: Owen Sisiwan,
a Pima Indian. Scottsdale PI Lena Jones enlists in Owen's defense. To
her horror, Lena finds herself rubbing elbows not just with greedy
Gloriana's family and employees, but with disgruntled authors and
extremists of all sorts. Like that serial killer-he had been dying to
get published by Patriot's Blood. What changed his mind? While working
the case, Lena, a survivor of a childhood spent in foster care, is
further pained by her sessions with a therapist for anger management.
Soon her flashbacks to the time just before her mother shot her
four-year-old self accelerate and move her closer to the mystery of her
own identity. Private detective Lena Jones, headquartered in
Scottsdale, AZ, sets out to rescue a 13-year-old girl kidnapped by her
father and taken across the Utah border. The man intends to trade his
daughter to a 68-year-old polygamist sect member, but Lena saves the
girl and someone else murders the polygamist. Police blame the girl's
mother, so Lena goes undercover in the polygamist compound as one of the
wives to gather pertinent clues. Stark desert surroundings underscore
the provocative subject matter, the outspoken protagonist, and the
“insider” look at polygamist life. Webb's second Lena Jones mystery,
after Desert Noir, is recommended for most collections. 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.
