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Summary
Summary
If there's one thing Bureau of Indian Affairs Investigator Emmet Quanah Parker knows, it's that the dead don't always stay dead. With him he carries the ghosts of a partner killed in action, three failed marriages, and a long affair with the bottle. And now he's about to face the most dangerous case of his career--one that begins with a body that doesn't stay buried. Brutally murdered and bizarrely mutilated, a woman's corpse is discovered on Havasupai Nation land. Parker is paired with FBI Special Agent Anna Turnipseed in a hastily assembled task force of two. The two share a mixed Native American ancestry...and little else. As they are pulled deeper into a complex case, Parker suspects they are being led--like Custer into Little Bighorn--into a killer's trap, with Anna the bait and Parker himself the quarry. At the heart of it are the dead, with history the most lethal weapon of all.... From the Paperback edition.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Edgar Award nominee Mitchell (Deep Valley Malice), an ex-California SWAT cop formerly assigned to the reservations of Inyo County, offers a taut thriller about criminal control of tribal gambling casinos. Peppered with bureaucratic legalese and illuminated by fascinating lore of the Southwestern tribes, the plot is layered with authenticity. Investigating the mutilation murder of a Las Vegas-based officer of the Bureau of Land Management, Emmett Quanah Parker, part-white, part-Comanche investigator for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, is assigned to work with rookie FBI agent, half-Modoc, half-Japanese Anna Turnipseed. Although the BLM agent's body was found on a remote reservation in Arizona with her face neatly sliced off, it becomes evident that she was killed near the borax pits in Death Valley, Calif., while working on an Indian land trade involving the site for a proposed super casino near an off-ramp of Interstate 15. While Parker is in Carson City to interrogate the gaming syndicate's lawyer, Parker's old enemy, FBI agent Burk Hagiman, defies Parker's judgment and sends Anna undercover to work as a dealer at a backwater casino, where, of course, she encounters danger. The complex plot slowly reveals a conspiracy involving Jamaicans, Vegas hitmen and double-dealing Native Americans. Throughout, Mitchell tightly controls his material, his bitterness over the white man's legacy to Native Americans evident in historical asides. Unfortunately, the heart-stopping action is marred by his preoccupation with landscape, too many cardboard cutout bad Indians and a cartoonish nemesis. The climax based on the villain's change of heart is too contrived to maintain full credibility, blurring the earlier promise of a nail-biting end. Despite all this, Parker and Turnipseed make a memorable literary pair. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
A derivative but nonetheless nail-bitingly intense hunt for a psychokiller through southwestern Indian reservations, tawdry casinos, and brooding Grand Canyon scenery, featuring dogged Bureau of Indian Affairs homicide investigator Emmett Quanah Parker and spunky rookie FBI special agent Anna Turpinseed. Historical and mystery novelist Mitchell (Fredericksburg, 1996, etc.) adopts Tony Hillerman's device of relying on old and young American Indians to surmount personal, cultural, and spiritual traumas as they track a killer. Thrice-divorced Parker, a half-breed Comanche, is notorious for his gung-ho persistence and hot-headed histrionics'he frequently vows to maim and kill his well-intentioned but oafish superior, Burk Hagiman. But eventually he warms to his partner Turpinseed, a half-breed Modoc whose feisty attitude hides a childhood of abuse from her drunken father. The two are after the person who skinned the face off a beautiful but corrupt Bureau of Land Management official, Stephanie Roper, then severed her spine, and finally dumped her body into a corner of the Grand Canyon that's part of Arizona's Havasupai Reservation. Parker and Turpinseed discover that Roper was waffling on a deal that would have swapped Indian land for a piece of federally owned turf in California fronting the highway leading into Las Vegas. The site is coveted by the Inter-Mountain Gaming company for a multi-tribal Indian casino. Just as Parker arrives to question Inter-Mountain's Jamaican president Nigel Merrison, he surprises the killer, with dreadlocks dangling from his hair, as he drops Merrison's mutilated corpse into Lake Tahoe. Their prey escapes after stabbing Parker's left hand. Meanwhile, Turpinseed decides to go undercover as a dealer at the casino where Roper's Lakota lover and Indian rights activist Cyrus Fourkiller (who wears his hair in dreadlocks and was furiously scrubbing his hands hours after Merrison was killed) has been spotted. A breathless page-turner that overcomes its by-the-numbers plotting and gore with memorable Native American myths and an outdoorsman's respect for the Southwest's brutal beauty.
Booklist Review
Mitchell, nominated for an Edgar Award for an earlier work, is a one-time tribal policeman who writes about Native Americans, both good guys and not-so-good guys, in a style that is at once authoritative and easy to read. Here, he sends Bureau of Indian Affairs investigator Emmett Quanah Parker to Arizona's Havasupai Reservation to check out the mutilated body of an unknown white female. The forensic trail takes Parker to Las Vegas, where he is joined by FBI agent Anna Turnipseed. Then, having identified the victim as a federal land agent, Parker, the veteran investigator, and Turnipseed, the FBI rookie, retrace the victim's recent travels to California. Smelling a rat from the very beginning, Parker is convinced the investigation is being led into a trap but cannot figure out the who, why, or how of things. This fast-moving story plays out against a vividly evoked backdrop of Native American culture and the reservation-based gaming industry. A fine crime novel and a must for Hillerman fans. --Budd Arthur
Library Journal Review
Mitchell's Southwest is as hauntingly beautiful and culturally complex as the real thing. When the faceless corpse of Stephanie Roper, a wheeling-dealing top official of the Bureau of Land Management, is discovered near Arizona's Havasupai Reservation, stoical Comanche Bureau of Indian Affairs investigator Emmett Quanah Parker is teamed with attractive, half-Modoc, half-Japanese FBI rookie Anna Turnipseed. Parker immediately senses that the killer is toying with them, providing clue after easy clue. As Anna goes undercover dealing cards at a Shoshone tribal casino, Parker heads to Lake Tahoe, where he almost loses his hand to the murderer's knife, temporarily loses the killer's scent, but nets another faceless corpse. Mitchell (Fredericksburg, LJ 2/1/96) was a law enforcement officer on the reservation in California's Inyo County and possesses an insider's knowledge of Native American history and the Southwest's brooding landscape. A good purchase, especially for Tony Hillerman fans.ÄSusan A. Zappia, Maricopa Cty. Lib. Dist., Phoenix (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.