An Old Chaos
A Latouche County Mystery
-
- $13.99
-
- $13.99
Publisher Description
When a landslide kills six people and destroys several expensive homes, Madeline Thomas, principal chief of the Klalos, and geologist Charlie O Neill know something is rotten in Latouche County: the land should never have been built on. Sheriff s investigator Rob Neill uncovers a suppressed hazard warning and evidence of payoffs to county government, with the help of librarian Meg McLean. Rob leads an investigation that implicates local development bigwigs and county personnel, including his boss and mentor, the sheriff. Meanwhile someone will stop at nothing, even murder, to keep the cover-up covered up. Cop, librarian, nurse, sheriff, and even an Indian chief they are all viewpoint characters in Sheila Simonson s engrossing new mystery, An Old Chaos. Expanding our view of the microcosm of a rural Columbia Gorge town introduced in the critically praised Buffalo Bill s Defunct, Simonson portrays heroism as well as corruption in high and low places. And human fallibility s potential for diasaster is joined by the landscape s; as the eponymous Wallace Stevens poem says, We live in an old chaos of the sun.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A missing landslide hazard area report followed by a fatal mud slide that wipes out expensive new homes in Washington's (fictional) Latouche County saddles sheriff's investigator Rob Neill with multiple problems in Simonson's pedestrian sequel to Buffalo Bill's Defunct (2008). Rob has to deal with the slide's after-effects and injuries he receives helping with rescue efforts, as well as a murder case after one possible suspect in the LHA coverup is found dead and another disappears. County politics from Sheriff Mack McCormick's office to Madeline Thomas, principal chief of the (fictional) Klalos tribe, intricately tangled with liaisons financial and sexual, offer plenty of motives for the crime. Rob's love interest, librarian Meg McLean, lends support. The author does a good job evoking the beauty of the Washington-Oregon border area between Mount Saint Helens and Mount Hood, but despite a satisfactory resolution to the murder investigation, the epilogue is much too pat.
