Cry Last Heard

September 1, 2004
In this follow-up to Leave No Trace (2002), mountain rescue ranger Tally Nowata is still grieving the brutal murder of her lover, researcher Paul O'Malley. Distant from most of her colleagues and emotionally devastated, Tally soon learns that Rayburn Smythe, the man who ordered Paul's death, has come to Wyoming to stalk Tally and her daughters. When the girls are kidnapped, Tally sets out on a late-December journey to rescue them from a remote mineshaft. While the book's premise will intrigue readers previously enthralled with Tally's heroism, they may grow weary of her incessant self-pitying, which worsens as the novel progresses. Somewhere between her melodramatic first-person prose ("Anger rides high, the heat makes my left arm ache, good, go on, heal, blood flow is a good thing, I'd like to see some of yours flow....") and her overactive imagination, Tally loses her sympathetic edge. When Nyala allows her main character to quit feeling sorry for herself, the story crackles with mysterious characters and vivid imagery, but these instances are too few to make the journey worthwhile.