Bone Valley

September 18, 2006
In Matturro's entertaining third legal thriller to feature Lilly Cleary, a cute Sarasota, Fla., DA with an obsessive compulsive disorder and an active libido (after Wildcat Wine
and Skinny-dipping
), Lilly takes on another eccentric client, activist Angus John Cartright, who has been sued for fruit libel by an orange grower. Lilly later discovers that Angus's partner is her creepy former boyfriend, M. David Moody, whose corpse turns up floating in a phosphogypsum stack ("a big lake full of toxic waste") in Manatee County. After Angus educates Lilly about endangered wildlife and toxic sludge, Angus dies in a suspicious explosion and Lilly must solve whodunit or be next on the endangered list. Florida's phospate-rich "bone valley" region provides the scary background, while Lilly's fearless exuberance under pressure adds comic relief to an intricate tale that underscores the catastrophic effects abandoned phosphate mines and deadly gyp stacks can have on people and the environment.