Rather like Ill Wind , also set in the Southwest, the plot of Blind Descent blends the individual tragedy of murder with a topical subplot, environmental damage to the cave by gas drilling. This time the two elements are integrated more successfully, and the result is one of the better Anna Pigeon novels. I would still suggest Firestorm to a new reader, but you can't go wrong with Nevada Barr. One look at that truckstop face, and you don't need to know that he wrote a series of novels set in nineteenth century Texas. But you wouldn't guess, indulging in that stereotype, that the Dave Robicheaux novels, a series of detective stories set in a small town outside New Orleans, would be lyrical mixtures of magic realism and gritty back alley violence.
Some writers find their milieu and blossom.
I picked up a Burke novel about Montana recently, and it wasn't there, none of what I read him for. Sunset Limited delivers the goods. The plot hinges on discovering who crucified a labor leader some thirty years ago, and it carries us through some new understanding of Robicheaux's personal demons. In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead . Burke has always dealt with issues bigger than who killed 'im and why.