Desert Cut: A Lena Jones Mystery

Betty Webb
Poisoned Pen Press (2008)
ISBN 9781590584910
Reviewed by Anita D. McClellan for Reader Views (10/07)

The fifth Lena Jones Mystery finds ex-cop and PI Lena scouting Arizona's Mexican border for Geronimo's 19th-century battle sites with LA-LA-Land film director Warren Quinn, her problematic and erstwhile lover, and leads Lena to discovery of the mutilated corpse of an unidentified girl between ages 5 and 7, nicknamed Precious Doe by the Cochise County medical examiner. Lena, who takes all instances of abused children personally, stumbles right into the local population of H-visa'ed, upper-middle class, foreign-born parents and their US-born and -raised daughters with a foot in two cultures.

A teen runaway’s sheltering of a youngster from Old World and New World sect-driven practices helps to drive a deadly social, hierarchal rite deeply underground, pits daughters against parents, descendents of pioneers who fought the Apache Wars against immigrant plant managers, and makes strange bedfellows of an Anglo Christian women's sect and Middle Eastern and African parents determined to manage “their” women and girls as they see fit.  The bodies of children pile up in Los Perdidos while Lena becomes obsessed with finding out what is going on in the wilderness desert country in spite of vigilante justice and the local sheriff, who has no clue what he and the community are dealing with but knows all about what makes Lena so determined to learn the truth. The Author's Note and Appendixes of “Desert Cut” make this novel's subject something no reader will forget and on which none can claim ignorance.

As the product of nine abusive foster homes who was found amnesic at age four on a Phoenix street severely disfigured from a shooting, Lena Jones is perennially seeking information about her parents and her abandonment's circumstances. Her Pima Indian, computer-geek partner, Jimmy Sisiwan, also orphaned as a child but adopted and raised by white parents, has his own obsessions and vulnerabilities, which make them ideal business partners and confidantes.  Pieces of Lena's past emerge as the series unfolds. In the second book, she learns something about her mother; in the third, she learns about her father; in the fourth, she figures out why she is so drawn to certain kinds of cases.  

“Desert Noir” (2001) launched the Lena Jones series, juxtaposing Scottsdale's up-market art scene with barrios, Indian lands and casinos, tourist traps. That heady brew of damaged and courageous PI, the Southwest's multi-tiered cultures, and breath-taking desert backdrop took a seat right away next to Nevada Barr's and Tony Hillerman's series. Ten percent of Webb’s debut novel proceeds were donated to Lura Turner Homes, a Phoenix residence for brain-damaged adults and children and teens with Down's Syndrome which signaled exactly what sets Betty Webb's novels apart: crime fiction with a social conscience. Lena Jones Mysteries are based on stories the author covered as a journalist and are set against the backdrop of Arizona's landmark-strewn “Grand Canyon State” and its social underbelly. Today Webb writes the Independent Press book-review column for Mystery Scene, teaches writing at Phoenix College, and lives in Scottsdale, AZ.

“Desert Wives” (2003), exhaustingly researched by the author and vetted for accuracy by now-Governor Janet Napolitano, hones in on modern-day polygamy in the Arizona Strip wilderness bordering Utah and AZ. Reader beware: Nothing to do with the starry-eyed depiction of polygamy in the HBO series “Big Love.” Publication of “Desert Wives ” coincided with media awareness of polygamist Tom Green's trial during the 2002 Utah Winter Olympics. The novel has since become a course adoption title for Women's Studies classes, played a role in the FBI pursuit of recently convicted polygamist sect leader and Most Wanted Warren Jeffs of St. George, Utah, and helped change Arizona's laws on polygamy. “Desert Shadows” (2004) focuses on foster children, hate groups, the book-publishing industry and Lena's anger management therapy. “Desert Run” (2006), centers on the fictional murder of a real-life escapee survivor of a 1944 German POW camp in Arizona. This book introduces LA filmmaker Warren Quinn as a love interest and the volatile mixture of native and foreign cultures and races alongside a little-known World War II footnote set in Arizona's Superstition Mountains.  

The imaginative mixture of history, geography, demographics, topical themes, solid research, Lena's efforts to achieve intimacy, and plot twists make all Lena Jones mysteries memorable in more ways than one.

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