“Gone to Darkness,” “Mesa Verde Victim” and more
“Gone to Darkness,” by Barbara Nickless (Thomas & Mercer)
Colorado mystery readers have lost some of their favorite writers in recent years. Stephen White, Diane Mott Davidson, Margaret Coel and Rex Burns have ended their series. But new mystery writers are emerging. The best of them may well be Barbara Nickless, whose Denver police detective, Sydney Rose Parnell, is a hauntingly complex character.
Nickless is already winning plaudits for her work. Two of the four books in the series have won the Colorado Book Award.
The latest is “Gone to Darkness,” a brutal story of pure evil. If you like thrillers, don’t miss this one.
Parnell discovers the mutilated body of a young man in a refrigerated freight car filled with thawed chickens. The Chicken Man, as he is dubbed, is a comic book artist and member of a mysterious group called the Superior Gentlemen, a group of “forced celibates” who hate women because they can’t score.
Parnell, who has just joined the Denver Police Department’s homicide unit and is teamed up with jaded detective Len Bondoni, believes the Superior Gentlemen have an agenda that goes beyond meeting girls.
When a second tortured and castrated body is discovered, she knows the group is out to kill as many people as possible.
At the same time she’s working the chicken Man case, Parnell is trying to solve the long-dead case of a yellow-eyed man who raped an old woman in a nursing home. After discovering she’s dealing with a serial rapist, Parnell connects him with the Superior Gentlemen. And then she realizes that she is being stalked.
Parnell herself is haunted by evil. A former Marine who has seen too much death, she feels safe only with her German shepherd, also a Marine veteran, and her detective lover, Michael Cohen. Parnell’s dark side and selfdoubt and tortured nightmares — along with her sense of humor — give depth to her as a character.
“Gone to Darkness” underscores Nickless’s emergence as the best writer of thrillers to hit Colorado — and the whole country for that matter — in a long time.
“Killer Chardonnay,”
by Kate Lansing (Berkley)
For Parker Valentine, it couldn’t get much worse. On the night of the longawaited opening of Vino Valentine, a powerful food and wine critic is poisoned while drinking a glass of her prize chardonnay.
Talk about a hangover for Parker.
Customers flee, and it looks like Parker’s dream of a wine bar has gone flat. She’s not willing to give up, of course. Despite a warning from detective Eli, a former schoolmate, she refuses to stay out of the investigation.
Things turn serious when Parker’s climbing gear is sabotaged. Then her parents’ house is vandalized, and her brother’s photographs of the wine bar opening are stolen. The brother’s handsome friend Reid, a celebrity chef, offers to help, but Parker isn’t so sure he’s not guilty. And can she trust a rival wine-bar couple who is surprisingly supportive?
“Killer Chardonnay” is a soft-boiled mystery on the order of Diane Mott Davidson’s beloved Goldie series, which ended a couple of years ago — an engaging sleuth, not too much blood and gore, and a few recipes (although nobody could top Davidson’s amazing dishes.)
Kate Lansing is a Denver author, and “Killer Chardonnay” is her debut novel. We hope they’ll be others.
“Mesa Verde Victim,” by Scott Graham (Torrey House)
A hundred years ago, a boy digging for ancient artifacts for Swedish collector Gustaf Nordenskiold was murdered, his body hidden in a covered pit. Now, a Durango man working on an archaeological dig is murdered, and archaeologist Chuck Bender thinks there is a connection.
Bender, wife Janelle and two daughters are sleuths in Scott Braham’s fourth National Park Service mystery. This one hits close to home since the prime suspect in the murder is Janelle’s brother,
Clarence.
Chuck discovers that what Nordenskiold — and perhaps his killer — was looking for were Indian canopic jars, pottery vessels used to store the viscera of dead humans. Such jars were used by Egyptians, but Nordenskiold believed the Anasazi might have utilized them as well.
Now, Ilona, a Finish museum curator familiar with Nordenskiold’s writings, is searching for the site where she believes the dead boy was digging. She’s been tipped off by a descendent of the boy’s family.
Such jars, if they exist, would be worth a fortune to looters. Ilona believes the dig, located off Park Service Land, is legitimate and has hired a local company to search for the treasure.
The murdered man is a friend of Chuck’s, so he and his family set off to find the killers. That leads them all over the remote Southwest, where they encounter not only the archaeologists, but also a homicide detective who once dated Chuck and, of course, the killer. Chuck shares his knowledge of archaeology and love of the Southwest with readers.
“The Cactus Plot,” by Vicky Ramakka (Artemesia Publishing)
Millie Whitehall gets a summer job as a BLM botanist in the Four Corners region and finds she’s dealing not only with desert plants but dead bodies. Both a BLM worker and a retired botanist are found dead in what appear to be staged accidents. Millie believes the murders have something to do with a plot of rare cactus that’s been disturbed. Cactus collectors pay big bucks for them.
Millie’s confronted with a series of suspects: a mysterious cowboy, an oil and gas worker, a German photographer, a BLM worker and an Indian who wants to be her boyfriend.
Readers will not only find out who done it but also learn a lot about desert plants.