It was a full house at The Poisoned Pen for the debut of Betty Webb’s tenth and final Lena Jones mystery, Desert Redemption. You can order the Lena Jones books, and a signed copy of Desert Redemption through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/2uhnpCs
Here’s the description of Desert Redemption.
“In Jones’s electrifying 10th…Scottsdale, Arizona, PI Lena is approached by Harold Slow Horse, one of Arizona’s leading artists…[and] gets on a trail that leads her at long last to answers about her troubled past…” —Publishers Weekly
At the age of four, Scottsdale private eye Lena Jones was shot in the head and left to die on a Phoenix street. After her rescue, she spent years in the abusive foster care system, never knowing who her parents were and why they didn’t claim her. When Desert Redemption begins, she still doesn’t know her real name.
Lena’s rough childhood—and the suspicion that her parents may have been members of a cult—keeps her hackles raised. So when Chelsea, the ex-wife of Harold Slow Horse, a close friend, joins a “new thought” organization called Kanati, Lena begins to investigate. She soon learns that two communes—polar opposites of each other—have sprung up nearby in the Arizona desert. The participants at EarthWay follow a rigorous dietary regime that could threaten the health of its back-to-the-land inhabitants, while the more pleasure-loving folk at Kanati are dining on sumptuous French cuisine.
On an early morning horseback ride across the Pima Indian Reservation, Lena finds an emaciated woman’s body in the desert. “Reservation Woman” lies in a spot close to EarthWay, clad in a dress similar to the ones worn by its women. But there is something about her face that reminds Lena of the Kanatians.
While investigating, Lena’s memory is jolted back to that horrible night when her father and younger brother were among those murdered by a cult leader named Abraham, who then vanished. Lena begins to wonder if either EarthWay or Kanati could be linked to that night, and to her own near-death. Could leaders of one or both shed light on what had happened to Lena’s mother, who vanished at the same time as Abraham?
All these mysteries are resolved in Desert Redemption, the tenth and final Lena Jones case, which can also be enjoyed on its own.
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Betty Webb recently answered questions for Bookreporter.com. You can read that interview here. https://bit.ly/2HInUxt
You can also watch the debut event from The Poisoned Pen with Webb and Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen.