Pack your rations, hiking boots and water bottles and join me on a literary tour through four atmospheric mysteries, set in and around our country’s national parks.
A Murder in Zion
First stop is Zion National Park in Utah. In Nicole Maggi’s terrific “A Murder in Zion” (Oceanview Publishing, $18.99), dauntless hero Emmeline “Emme” Helliwell is an agent for the Investigative Services Branch (ISB) of the National Park Service.
Emme is grief-stricken from her mom’s death, angry that her sister is incommunicado, tired of “seeing the ugliest side of humanity” in beautiful places and burdened with guilt from a mistake made during a past investigation.
When the body of an old friend is discovered in the Narrows, one of the most popular hikes in the park, Emme investigates. The trail leads to a misogynistic cult and a confrontation in the switchbacks of Zion.
Battle Mountain
Next stop, the Sierra Madres in C.J. Box’s “Battle Mountain” (Putnam), featuring Joe Pickett of the Wyoming Game and Fish Department. Although one plot thread depends on events from past novels, this is a propulsive thriller.
Gov. Spencer Rulon, who regularly uses Joe as his “trusted range rider,” asks Joe to find his missing son-in-law and his son-in-law’s hunting guide. Joe teams up with a rookie warden, Susan Kany, who has one of the best lines in the book: “What would Joe Pickett do?” The thinking behind that? Joe occasionally may be reckless, frequently is stubborn and regularly goes out on a limb, but his moral compass is always true north.
It needs to be in this investigation. The Centurion Club, a group of defense industry CEOs known as “the military-industrial complex in cowboy boots,” is gathering at the B-Lazy-U ranch. All the trails lead there.
Cold Burn
Our next stop isn’t on shelves until April 29, from Jon Land and Jeff Ayres, who collaborate under the pseudonym A.J. Landau. In “Cold Burn,” Michael Walker, another ISB investigator, and Gina Delgado, an FBI agent, investigate from the “heart of the United States’s ecosystem” in Florida’s Everglades to the massive ice caves and frozen plateaus of Alaska’s Glacier Bay National Park.
Landau’s high-concept mystery (Minotaur Books) leaps like lightning from one seemingly disparate crime to another, involving stolen native artifacts, a sunken Virginia-class submarine, a U.S. Geological team buried in an avalanche, a murdered environmental intern drowned in a bayou and an angry (rightfully) Native community, once again coerced into assisting the U.S. government.
The novel takes on BIG global issues without ever losing intimacy with its main characters. Are there monsters in this thriller? More than one.
Kaua’i Storm
Our final destination is the weeping mangrove trees, “tall clumps of pili grass,” and “sticky, sweet scent” of Hawai’i’s Kelia Forest Reserve in Tori Eldridge’s scrupulous “Kaua’i Storm” (Thomas & Mercer). This one is due May 20. Put a pin in your calendar.
Oregon National Park Ranger Makalani Pahukula returns to her family’s homestead on the island of Kaua’i for her grandmother’s birthday, only to discover her cousins are missing and her family is even more challenging than she remembered. Makalani has a drive to “be productive every minute,” so when a body is discovered in the forest, she dashes into the fray.
