cover image Eye of the Mountain God

Eye of the Mountain God

Penny Rudolph, . . St. Martin's/Dunne, $24.99 (292pp) ISBN 978-0-312-54546-8

Fans of independent women striving against the odds will best appreciate Rudolph's less than suspenseful thriller. Megan Montoya, a single mom with an eight-year-old autistic, hearing-impaired daughter, has moved from Pennsylvania to Santa Ynez, N.Mex., where she hopes to jump-start her career as a professional photographer. Soon after her paperboy vanishes, Megan finds within a days-old newspaper five emerald arrowheads, which, she later learns, might be worth a million dollars each. She decides to hang on to the arrowheads as a means out of her financial difficulties. Megan gets another break when a representative of an organization called Save the People asks her to photograph the poor women and children of nearby mountain villages to help their cause. Rudolph (Thicker than Blood ) throws in a terrorist, who's planning an attack in revenge for the U.S. government's violating the treaty that ended the Mexican-American war, but the various parts never gel into a satisfying whole. (Apr.)