Rage

When a British travel writer disappears in the California Sierras, his publisher asks romance writer and amateur sleuth Melinda Pink (last seen in The Stone Hawk ) to find him. Brilliant but alcoholic Timothy Argent had been following the trail of a wagon train from Missouri to California and was last heard from via a postcard from Gabriel, Calif. It is feared that the profitable writer has gone on a serious bender. Miss Pink tracks him to Dogtown, a gold-rush ghost town being rebuilt as a tourist attraction, but finds he is no longer there, having run off with the beautiful English girlfriend of Bret Vogel, caretaker of a local estate. After Miss Pink discovers Timothy's Jeep crashed in a canyon, she begins to fear for the writer's safety, especially when Vogel is tied to drug smuggling in Texas. When two dead bodies confirm her dire suspicions, Miss Pink brings her knowledge of human nature to bear as she uncovers the truth. Moffat again artfully limns life in the awesome mountains and delves into the passions that can fester in small and isolated communities. (Oct.)