Things are never easy for Scottsdale private eye Lena Jones. Her partner in Desert Investigations, Jimmy Siswan, is leaving for an upscale wife and a job at Sun Microsystems. Her old Captain at the Scottsdale PD is off home to Brooklyn. She's doing security for Warren Quinn, director of a documentary being shot at Papago Park about the German POW camp and the "great escape" of Christmas Eve, 1944, when some prisoners tunneled out and fled. And one surviving escapee, Kapitan zur Zee Erik Ernst, a man in his nineties confined to a wheelchair after a boating accident, has just been murdered. Worse, his Ethiopian care giver begs Lena to clear him.

Lena, experienced in probing the past for answers to the central mystery of her own life--who is she?--learns that Ernst and two other POWs hid out in the rugged Superstitions. Nearby, on Christmas night, a whole farm family, the Bollingers, was slaughtered. A jury didn't convict the only survivor, the teenage son. What might Chess Bollinger know about Ernst--and vice versa? And how much can Lena trust Quinn, either as a client, a witness, or a lover?

A complex, stunning case based on real Arizona history, journalist Betty Webb, author of Desert Noir, Desert Wives, and Desert Run, spins an evocative, haunting story.

Reviews

"Lena makes a refreshing heroine; being raised by nine different foster families gives her unusual depth."

--Booklist

• • •

"Webb bases her latest Lena Jones adventure on a real episode in Arizona history: the great escape of 25 Germans from Camp Papago, a POW camp located between Phoenix and Scottsdale. Famous director Warren Quinn is making a documentary about the escape, and Lena’s firm, Desert Investigations, is hired to handle security for the project. One of the escaped POWs, Erik Ernst, still lives in Scottsdale and is starring in the movie. When he is found murdered, Rada Tesema, his Ethiopian caregiver, is immediately suspected. Rada pleads for Lena to help prove him innocent, and she soon learns that Ernst had a huge number of enemies, many of whom would have gladly seen him dead. Readers may wonder why the brainy and beautiful Lena would begin dating whiny and pedantic Warren, but that’s the only slightly off note in an otherwise fascinating adventure. As in the preceding episodes in the series, Webb effectively evokes the beauty of the Arizona desert." —Booklist

• • •

"At the start of Webb's multifaceted, fast-paced fourth Lena Jones mystery (after 2004's Desert Shadows), the scrappy workaholic PI is supervising security for filmmaker Warren Quinn, who's shooting a documentary about the escape of German POWs from a prison camp in Scottsdale, Ariz., in 1944. When someone murders the leader of the escapees, arrogant, disagreeable Erik

Ernst, now 91 and retired in Scottsdale, suspicion falls on the former U-boat commander's Ethiopian immigrant care-giver, Rada Tesema. Believing

Tesema to be innocent, Lena agrees to investigate. Meanwhile, Lena's personal life is in disarray. Raised in foster homes and wary of close relationships, she's drawn to Quinn but is suspicious of his motives. Her

partner in Desert Investigations, Jimmy Sisiwan, is getting married and taking a job with Lena's biggest customer, while Lena's mentor in the Scottsdale police department is returning to Brooklyn. Webb combines

evocative descriptions of place with fine historical research in a plot packed with twists."--Publishers Weekly (Mar.)