The Wild Inside

April 6, 2015
In Carbo’s evocative debut, a top-priority case takes Denver-based National Parks Service special agent Ted Systead to just about the last place he’d like to go—starkly beautiful Glacier National Park, where at age 14 he survived a grizzly bear attack that killed his father. Making matters worse, the murder Ted is investigating involves a man who was bound to a tree within the park and then mauled, probably while still alive, by a grizzly. Little of the investigation plays out predictably, especially once it emerges that the victim was an abusive meth head. As the haunted Ted struggles to come to terms with his history while navigating the twisty, increasingly scary trail the case takes, Carbo paints a moving picture of complex, flawed people fighting to make their way in a wilderness where little is black or white, except the smoky chiaroscuro of the sweeping Montana sky. Agent: Nancy Yost, Nancy Yost Literary Agency.

April 15, 2015
Grizzly bears, murder, mauling, and mayhem mix in Carbo's debut novel. Ted Systead's past and present intersect in an unexpected-and chilling-manner against the incongruously gorgeous backdrop of Glacier National Park. When Systead was a kid, his father, a pathologist, was dragged off and killed by a grizzly bear in Glacier. Now, decades later, Systead is a homicide investigator for the Department of the Interior based out of Denver. When the body of drug user and general lowlife Victor Lance is found shredded by a park grizzly after having been secured to a tree, Systead must push back against his own demons to work the case. In the process, he reluctantly teams with Park Officer Monty Harris, who he suspects is little but a spy for his boss, Eugene Ford. But, as they work their ways through the people who populated Lance's life (his mother, former girlfriend, and others), Systead gains a grudging respect for Monty and finds himself unraveling other peoples' lives in order to get at the truth. Carbo likes detail and packs the book with trivia about the park and its wildlife inhabitants, which prove interesting. However, when it comes to literary restraint, the author comes up short, launching into exhaustive and ultimately extraneous detail about the characters and their lives, forcing readers to wade through a surfeit of description and a flood of characters. Although the writing is fine, the plotting isn't electrifying and the story is not hypnotic enough to withstand the flood of information the author unleashes. By Page 50, she's introduced more than 20 named characters, many of whom serve next to no purpose. In subsequent chapters, even more characters pop up, contributing nothing more than their presences to the unfolding plot. While the park setting's attractive and has potential, the excessive detail and avalanche of characters, combined with a protagonist who doesn't seem all that competent, get in the way of narrative drive.

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June 1, 2015
When Ted Systead was 14, his father was killed by a bear while they were camping in Glacier National Park. Now a special agent for the National Park Service, Systead is assigned a homicide investigation that sends him back to Glacier, where a man has been tied to a tree and mauled to death by a grizzly bear. The victim, Victor Lance, had alienated plenty of suspects, from battered girlfriends to sociopathic drug dealers. Systead is stymied by a lack of evidence, thanks to the bear that destroyed the body. Unable to continue repressing the past, Systead struggles to reconcile flashbacks of his father's horrific death with his responsibility to find Lance's bear and his human killers. Sharp, introspective Systead is a strong series lead, and Carbo rolls out solid procedural details, pitting Systead against Department of the Interior bureaucrats. The grittiness of the poverty-wracked area surrounding Glacier plays against the park's dangerous beauty in this dark foray into the wilderness subgenre. Put this one in the hands of those who enjoy Paul Doiron's Mike Bowditch novels and Julia Keller's Bell Elkins series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)