Southeastern Arizona is a tinderbox. Down Under Copper's plans to explore for minerals pit landowners, worried about their water supply and land values, against those hoping to profit from the mining venture. Someone snaps. In the traditional homeland of the Chiricahua Apaches, an environmental lawyer's body lies in the burned wreckage of his trailer. As if in retaliation, a DUC executive is shot. Geologist Frankie MacFarlane, her students, and Joaquin Black, an old friend and local rancher, find the executive's body in a clearing among the volcanic hoodoos of Chiricahua National Monument. And that night, near Paradise, on the eastern side of the mountain range, someone kills an ethnobotanista walker and puzzle maker who hasn't spoken in years. When Frankie, Joaquin, and Joaquin's brother Raul become suspects in the murders, Frankie must decipher interlocking puzzles to clear their names and to find the killer - or killers - before they strike again. In the process, she discovers that, contrary to geologic principles, the past is the key to the present. Miller weaves together geoscience, Western history and culture, ecology, family, and place into a compelling puzzle mystery narrated in Frankie MacFarlane's unique voice.
Reviews
Selection Librarians will want to check in to Hoodoo by Susan Cummins Miller. It has not been reviewed prepub and is therefore not owned widely (even though the author's earlier works are). ""Miller, who holds degrees in history, anthropology, and geology, and a M.S. in Geology, is a favorite with me and will appeal to readers of Sarah Andrews and Nevada Barra and Sandi Ault as well as Michael McGarrity and Elizabeth Gunn. And in Hoodoo, Tony Hillerman."" --Lorri Amsden ""Geologist turned writer Susan Cummins Miller is carving out a distinguished niche with her Frankie Macfarlane mystery series [...] compelling puzzle mysteries."" --Dee Ann Ray ""As a western whodunit, Hoodoo excels at drawing ""circles within circles"" as MacFarlane deciphers who killed whom and why."" --The Tombstone Epitaph ""Miller draws parallels between Arizona's Massai Point linked to the Apaches and Africa's Masaii tribe to form an unusual, imaginative spine for the story."" --Barabara Peters ""...Susan Miller has created a group of interesting, fully realized characters, as well as concocted an intriguing mystery, one not easily guessed. She's also used the Arizona countryside to excellent effect. Margaret Coel, look out. Miller is hot on your trail."" --CKC, Roudup Magazine. Dec. 2008


Awards
Runner-up for IndieFab awards (Mystery-Fiction) 2008. Commended for WILLA Literary Award (Contemporary Fiction) 2009.



Book Information
ISBN 9780896726239
Author Susan Cummins Miller
Format Hardback
Page Count 292
Imprint Texas Tech Press,U.S.
Publisher Texas Tech Press,U.S.
Weight(grams) 513g