read on my iPhone
2006, Poisoned Pen Press
346 pgs.
Adult Murder Mystery
Finished 4/25/19
Goodreads rating: 3.90 - 332 ratings
My rating: 3.5
Setting: Contemporary Scottsdale, AZ
First line/s: "It was a good day to film but a bad day to die."
My comments: It took me awhile to get into this story, but it grew on me as more and more information about the characters unfolded. In 1944, 28 German POWs escaped from the American prison camp called Camp Papago in Scottsdale, AZ. This is the story of the murder of one of those prisoners 60 years later, and the domino effect that had Lena Jones hot on the trail. It also includes a bit of romance for herself, albeit with a great deal of untrusting on her part, and the loss and near-loss of two friends essential in her life. Decent storytelling.
Goodreads synopsis: Things are never easy for Scottsdale private eye Lena Jones. Her partner in Desert Investigations, Jimmy Siswan, is leaving for an upscale wife and a job at Sun Microsystems. Her old Captain at the Scottsdale PD is off home to Brooklyn. She's doing security for Warren Quinn, director of a documentary being shot at Papago Park about the German POW camp and the ""great escape"" of Christmas Eve, 1944, when some prisoners tunneled out and fled. And one surviving escapee, Kapitan zur Zee Erik Ernst, a man in his nineties confined to a wheelchair after a boating accident, has just been murdered. Worse, his Ethiopian care giver begs Lena to clear him.
Lena, experienced in probing the past for answers to the central mystery of her own life--who is she?--learns that Ernst and two other POWs hid out in the rugged Superstitions. Nearby, on Christmas night, a whole farm family, the Bollingers, was slaughtered. A jury didn't convict the only survivor, the teenage son. What might Chess Bollinger know about Ernst--and vice versa? And how much can Lena trust Quinn, either as a client, a witness, or a lover?
A complex, stunning case based on real Arizona history, journalist Betty Webb, author of Desert Noir, Desert Wives, and Desert Run, spins an evocative, haunting story.
No comments:
Post a Comment