Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Desert Rage: A Lena Jones Mystery-Betty Webb

Desert Rage: A Lena Jones Mystery
Betty Webb
Poisoned Pen, Oct 7 2014, $24.95
ISBN 9781464203107

In Scottsdale, Arizona, fourteen year old Ali Cameron and her boyfriend Kyle Gibbs confess to the cops that they committed the violent murders of her parents and her tweener brother with a baseball bat.  Scottsdale PD closes the bludgeoning violent case.

However, Congresswoman Juliana Thorsson has a personal interest in the Cameron mass murders.  She hires Desert Investigations detectives Lena Jones and Jimmy Sisiwan to learn what led to the teen rage as she admits she is Ali’s biological mother having donated an egg.  The Representative also makes clear she prefers the PIs find evidence to exonerate her “offspring” even at the cost of burying Gibbs.  As Lena investigates she finds other people with stronger motives to kill the Dr. and his wife though the son probably was in the wrong place at the wrong time; and she also feels a foster care kinship to Kyle who the sleuth prefers to exonerate. 

The eighth Lena Jones Desert mystery (see Desert Wives and Desert Wind) is a tremendous whodunit that adds freshness by providing the viewpoints of egotistical Ali and troubled Kyle; as well as the star who revises her definition of what a mother is from what a MOTHER is.  Action-packed but character-driven Desert Rage is a fabulous investigative tale.


Harriet Klausner

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