Reviewed by Brenda G.
Cooper, Steven. Desert
Remains. Amherst, NY: Seventh Street Books, 2017. 400 pages.
____________ Dig your Grave. Amherst, NY: Seventh Street Books, 2018.
412 pages.
Steven
Cooper is an award-winning journalist who also writes fiction, in this case,
mysteries.
His main characters in these two works, volumes 1 and 2 of a
series, are Gus Parker and Alex Mills. Gus makes his living as a medical
imager, but to the police, he is a psychic. Alex is a police detective working
with homicide and other crimes. The series is set in Phoenix, Arizona. The
volumes in the series bear the note “A Gus Parker and Alex Mills Novel.”
Desert
Remains. Women are dying in the Phoenix area, their bodies left in
caves near hiking trails, at first. The killer leaves few clues. Their jewelry
remains with the bodies; it is not stolen. Victim identification is handy; not
stolen, either. And the killer leaves a signature of sorts – a carved depiction
of the murder, his or her own pictograph of the event.
Whereas Alex’s role in murder investigations often draws him
into the spotlight, Gus prefers to remain anonymous. His work as a medical
imager sometimes involves long hours but he has found time to work as a psychic
in many U.S. cities, plus London, Dublin, Prague, and Riyadh. That work is both
lucrative and tiring. Now as he catches the news after work, sharing dinner
with his elderly fellow psychic Beatrice, he listens to a report of the latest
gruesome find and gets a vibe, one which he needs to share with Mills.
This is a complex tale with details about Alex’s family life
and its impact on his work, Gus’s work with Beatrice to “out” fraudulent
psychics, information about desert pictographs, other workers in the police
department and their history, and a folk rock singer named Billie Welch, who
truly has star status.
Gus is in “at the kill”, so to speak, meaning he is present
at the final scene, as is Mills, just a bit later. These two likable and very
human characters deal with life and death on a daily basis, and yet retain
their sanity, human kindness, and the capacity to love. And Gus’s anonymity may
have taken a hit.
Dig
Your Grave. Alex Mills and Gus Parker are back. Alex’s
teenaged son is out of trouble for selling drugs (a subplot in the first
novel,) but manages to find new trouble to provide another subplot. Gus and
superstar Billie are now an item, sharing time, space, and experiences.
Superstars can attract stalkers, yielding another subplot. And murders continue
to take place in the Phoenix area, but in this volume the victims are male.
Bodies are being found in crudely dug, shallow graves in
cemeteries; there is dirt under the victims’ fingernails, indicating they might
have been forced to dig by hand. The
first victim carries no identification, but is found to be a corporate CEO. The
second is a plastic surgeon. Victim number three is a travel agent. After
receiving an urgent phone call, each abruptly departed and was not seen alive
again. The victims are well-to-do and approximately the same age.
A seemingly unrelated story involves the 25th
anniversary of the disappearance and presumed death of an area college student
while she was on a spring break trip to Mexico. Gus is having visions of
someone falling from a hotel balcony. But when, where, and why is he seeing
this? What is he supposed to do?
Sharing more details could well
force me into the spoiler role. I do not want to do that. These books are
well-crafted and well worth reading. I
am ready for the third, which will probably appear in 2019. To more mysteries
with good detective-psychic collaborations!
