Arches Enemy

April 15, 2019
Graham’s workmanlike fifth whodunit featuring archeologist Chuck Bender (after 2018’s Yosemite Fall) takes Bender and his family—paramedic wife Janelle Ortega and two stepdaughters—to Utah’s Arches National Park, where Bender has been hired to study a pictograph considered to be “the most detailed example of Ancestral Puebloan storytelling ever discovered.” Meanwhile, the park’s Landscape Arch has collapsed, apparently as a result of shock waves from seismic pounding conducted by those “trolling for underground deposits of oil and natural gas.” A jogger also died in the collapse. When Bender finds evidence that someone planned to blow up the arch, and two more people die, he again turns detective. His task is complicated by the possible role in the mystery of his scam artist mother, Sheila, whom Janelle and his stepdaughters have never met. Graham fails to make the most of his promising setup, and the contrived mechanism by which Bender escapes harm toward the end will elicit eye-rolls. Those interested in national parks and the environmental threats to them will be rewarded.

June 1, 2019

Archaeologist Chuck Bender brings his wife, paramedic Janelle Ortega, and his two stepdaughters with him for a secret job at Arches National Park, UT. Yet before he can get far into the project, charting a cave with connections to Native American history, one of the sandstone arches collapses, taking a woman with it. Although the woman wasn't supposed to be on the arch, Chuck blames the seismic trucks that are exploring for oil and natural gas. He suspects a cover-up of that death, but it's hard to ignore the other fatalities in the park. While he tries to protect his family from violence, Chuck discovers the mastermind behind the environmental damage might be closer than he expects. The emphasis is on natural beauty, the history of the arches and the area, and the possible devastation of the environment by the greed of politicians and the petroleum industry. However, the fifth in the series (after Yosemite Fall) also points to others' responsibility for brutality and destruction. VERDICT Fans of Nevada Barr's "Anna Pigeon" series or readers of environmental mysteries may appreciate this lush tale, but those who read for character may dislike the sometimes sarcastic, sometimes unlikable protagonist.--Lesa Holstine, Evansville Vanderburgh P.L., IN

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2019
Archaeologist Chuck Bender's contract for preservation work in Utah's Arches National Park is disrupted by a sudden death that turns out to be only the first of several. Whatever provoked Megan Johnson to ignore all the park rules and venture onto the Landscape Arch, one of many striking, naturally formed sandstone structures that give the park its name, payback was swift and unforgiving: The arch collapsed under her, plunging her five stories to her death. A regrettable accident, says chief ranger Sanford Gibbons. Not a bit, insists hotheaded Chuck (Yosemite Fall, 2018, etc.). First he blames George Epson, the regional manager of O&G Seismic, for the petrochemical blasting he thinks caused the arch to collapse; then, when he finds a neat hole bored in the base of the arch with telltale signs of an explosive packed into it, he insists that it was deliberate murder--and that Gibbons, who maintains that he examined the remnants of the arch itself without finding anything suspicious, is covering it up. Chuck's knack of antagonizing would-be allies isn't limited to the death of Megan Johnson. He constantly crosses swords with his wife, Durango paramedic Janelle Ortega, over how best to handle her newly rebellious 13-year-old daughter, Carmelita; with Carmelita herself, who's got quite the mouth on her; and with his hippy-dippy mother, Sheila Bender, who neglected him during the years he was fighting to grow up but wants back into his life now that she's hung out a shingle as a seer in nearby Moab. Almost everyone in the case, from a pair of retired couples visiting the park to a homeless man who's taken up residence there, Chuck gradually realizes, is connected to his mother. Where will it all end? Readers new to the series are advised to save their sympathy for the peripatetic hero and his immediate family since most members of the noncontinuing cast are bound for either the slammer or the morgue.

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