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I've been on the lookout for some time for Betty Webb's acclaimed DESERT WIVES, which focussed on polygamy. But in the meantime her latest book came my way first, and I found it an engrossing read. It probably would have helped to have read the earlier books in the Lena Jones series first, but Webb is a skilled enough writer to dole out sufficient information to help newcomers along, but not to hold the plot up for those who have been with her since the start. DESERT SHADOWS is an excellent example of issue-based crime fiction that works and doesn't leave the reader feeling like she's been pinned to the wall and harangued by a writer with a message to get across at any cost. Lena, a PI in Scottsdale, Arizona, is called in to help investigate the murder of racist publisher Gloriana Alden-Taylor, who meets a sticky end over lunch at a publishing convention. She has her work cut out, as a fairly unsavoury cast of friends and acquaintances all have plenty of motive to have poisoned Gloriana's salad. And there's even a white supremacist on Death Row with delusions of publishing grandeur who might have arranged for her to be bumped off. Lena is an engagingly flawed heroine, one whose blanked-out past life is coming back to her in frightening flash-backs. She was adopted as a child after being found at a roadside with a bullet in her head and is starting to piece together what happened to her. The sessions with the shrink for anger management seem a little heavy-handed, but do allow Webb to show the character growing and moving on. The only fly in the ointment for me in a truly absorbing book was the absolutely infuriating character of Dusty, Lena's cowboy ex-boyfriend. I simply couldn't believe that someone of her strength would allow this deadbeat house space. As he moped around looking like a wet weekend, I was hoping she would insert his spurs somewhere very painful to dissuade him from coming back!
Reviewed by Sharon Wheeler, July 2004
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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