Review: Terrific Boxed Set -- Get It Now!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 11 30, 2013
This is a really terrific set containing the first three entries into Toni Dwiggins' Forensic Geology Series. I had previously purchased the three entries separately (and in backwards order) with Volcano Watch, Badwater and finally the prequel Quicksilver which added a solid foundation for what I hope is a long list of titles for readers to follow the sleuthing team of Cassie Oldfield and Walter Shaws. You are essentially getting 2.5 novels of engrossing reading and fun. I've heard a rumor that the next book in the series is underway and I look forward to it.In the meantime, read about Cassie and Walter as they pursue eco-terrorists or solve more mundane murder mysteries against the backdrops of Death Valley, an erupting volcano or the vast foothills, valleys and mines of the Sierra Nevada as they tease clues from dirt samples, mud tracks and use earth science and applied knowledge of the geology of the area to solve the case while using their wits to dodge danger themselves. Cassie and Walter are undoubtedly an oddball couple but Dwiggins does the difficult: she has developed two very "real" characters and made us care about them as they approach each case with earnestness and just the right degree of self-doubt and human frailty. There's no pie-in-the-sky CSI stuff here. Dwiggins was already author of earth science textbooks and we are treated to a liberal dose of geologic science that is fun while not dumbed-down. Her protagonists essentially evaluate the evidence and embark on intelligent guesswork to find that pattern that would explain the whole. It's all a lot of fun, well-paced, and scarily plausible. I  don't gush about authors but I really urge you to treat yourself to this boxed set.