Death Where the Bad Rocks Live

July 16, 2012
Wendelboe’s serviceable follow-up to his first mystery set in the South Dakota Badlands, 2011’s Death Along the Spirit Road, has FBI agent Manny Tanno reassessing his Native American heritage after being assigned to the Pine Ridge Reservation. The recent discovery of human remains in a remote and inhospitable area of Pine Ridge used as a bombing range during WWII reveals murders took place there many years apart. New deaths—and an attempt on Manny’s own life—show that something in the maze of scorched rocks must be worth killing for. Manny must cope with flaky or obstructive members of the Oglala Sioux Tribal Police, the mistrust of local residents, and his own uneasy ruminations about what the spirit of the law demands. Wendelboe’s own experience as a western lawman helps make the dogged police work convincing despite fuzzy plotting and stolid prose. Agent: Bill Contardi, Brandt & Hochman Literary.

Starred review from August 15, 2012
An FBI agent's cold case gets hotter by the day. Manny Tanno thought he'd left his early years on the Pine Ridge Reservation far behind, but his presumed failure to solve a case (Death Along the Spirit Road, 2011) gets him reassigned from D.C. back to Pine Ridge. When three bodies are found in a bombed-out old Buick in the Stronghold area of Badlands National Park, Manny's investigation reminds him that the past won't stay buried. One of the bodies is identified as that of a mining engineer. Another is that of Oglala holy man and famous artist, Moses Ten Bears. A more recent body from the 1960s is that of a college student whose roommate at the time was Alexander "Ham" High Elk, who's been nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court. High Elk is the grandson of Senator Clayton Charles, who's remained Moses Ten Bears' close friend even though Clayton never married the Native American woman who bore his child. Not only is the case politically sensitive and hard to solve, but Manny ignores his diabetes while struggling to resurrect his love life and help a young tribal police officer who's being sexually harassed by the niece of the police chief. Despite trying to forget it, Manny has a strong connection with his past that will help him solve the case if he can escape death at the hands of a determined killer. An exciting and quirky mystery that seamlessly shifts between past and present, offering a number of finely delineated characters and a strong sense of life on the reservation and the beauties of a hostile land.

COPYRIGHT(2012) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.