Desert Lost: Lena Jones Mystery
Webb's sobering sixth mystery to feature PI Lena Jones further explores the abuses of polygamy first exposed in 2003'sDesert Wives. Late one night, while staking out a Scottsdale, Ariz., storage yard in the hope of catching vandals, Lena hears suspicious sounds just outside the yard. She soon discovers the still warm body of a dead woman wearing a long calico dress—an obvious sister-wife (i.e., a woman who shared her man with numerous other women). With the nearest polygamist compound a five-hour drive away toward Utah, how did the victim wind up in Scottsdale? Lena, who suffered a troubled childhood as an orphan, gets on a trail that leads her to lost boys, surplus male teens expelled by the older men who run the polygamist cults. Clear-cut characterizations help a complicated plot flow smoothly. As Webb points out in a note, polygamy still spawns many social ills, despite the recent, well-publicized conviction of Mormon fundamentalist prophet Warren Jeffs.(Dec.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.--This text refers to theHardcoveredition.