Title Desert Cut: A Lena Jones Mystery
Author: Webb, Betty
Rating ***1/2
Tags mystery, series, female genital mutilation, child abuse
Your review Betty Webb writes a mystery series about Lena Jones, a private investigator with a mysterious history of child abuse, amnesia, and foster homes. The mysteries sometimes revolve around child abuse cases. Her 2nd in the series, Desert Wives, was about the fundamentalist polygamous Mormon cults. It was published not long before Jon Krakauer's non-fiction Under the Banner of Heaven on the same topic, and the two books helped publicize the serious abuses going on in the name of those sects, which have in turn helped lead to the prosecution of Warren Jeffs and the recent raid on the sect in Texas.
In this series outing, Lena and her significant other find the body of a young girl in the Arizona desert. Lena, driven by her past, must be a part of the investigation, which leads to cases involving female genital mutilation. So, in other words, it is a rather dark story, but a powerful one, made even more powerful by the facts about FGM given in the author's notes at the end of the book.
Publication Poisoned Pen Press (2008), Hardcover, 277 pages
Publication date 2008
ISBN 1590584910 / 9781590584910
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