Double Prey: A Posadas County Mystery (Posadas County Mysteries)
It’s spring in Posadas County, New Mexico, but Undersheriff Estelle Reyes-Guzman isn’t enjoying the weather. In fact, the high-desert landscape and its natural inhabitants seem to have turned particularly malevolent, what with a boy’s eye being pierced by a rattlesnake fang and the discovery of a jaguar skull reminding everyone of just what a forbidding place the desert can be. The finding of the jaguar is connected to the accidental death of a teenager, brother of the boy bit by the snake, and eventually to more unearthed bones, but these are decidedly human and require Reyes-Guzman and her former boss, retired sheriff Bill Gastner, to unpeel the layers of a years’-old dispute turned violent. Havill is a master at using procedural details to expose the complexities of small-town relationships, but he also excels at drawing meaning from landscape. Like an archaeologist sifting history from the ground, Reyes-Guzman digs clues from the guano-splattered floor of the cave where the jaguar’s skull was found. One of the stronger entries in an always-satisfying series. --Bill Ott--This text refers to theHardcoveredition.