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DESERT WIVES
by Betty Webb
Poisoned Pen Press, January 2003
302 pages
$24.95
ISBN: 1590580303


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Readers first met Arizona private investigator Lena Jones in Betty Webb's acclaimed debut novel, Desert Noir. Lena's back with a vengeance in Webb's follow-up, Desert Wives, which more than lives up to the promise of its predecessor.

In this latest book, Lena is enlisted to rescue a 13-year-old girl from a planned marriage to a polygamist. Someone else provides a different kind of rescue, though, by killing the husband-to-be. The police suspect the girl's mother of the crime, but Lena can't believe that's true. To exonerate the young girl's mother, Lena goes underground into the polygamous cult, posing as a polygamous wife herself. Through it all, Lena continues her own personal investigation into her own past. As was revealed in Desert Noir, Lena was found unconscious at the side of a road when she was very young and she has no memories of her parents or her early life. This current case has cast the few memories she does have in an entirely new light.

Betty Webb is a refreshing new voice from the U.S. Southwest. She brings the Arizona desert to life, but the setting never overwhelms the story. In Desert Wives, Webb not only tells a great story, she also provides an expose of the polygamous communities that continue to exist in Arizona and Utah. Never didactic, Webb effectively unveils that horrors that exist in these communities and the hands-off attitude taken by local law enforcement and politicians.

Desert Wives is a page-turner that will stay with you and leave you eager for the next installment in this breakout series.

Reviewed by Susan Anderson, November 2002

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