A muddled plot and a whiny heroine make for middling entertainment in McLendon's latest mystery featuring art dealer Alix Thorssen (last seen in 1999's Nordic Nights). Alix, who owns a gallery in Jackson Hole, Wyo., agrees to help stage an art auction to benefit wildlife conservation in the Yellowstone-Grand Teton ecosystem. Planning the auction raises longstanding, simmering conflicts between ranchers and environmentalists to a fast boil. Two events involving a wolf bring the environmental fight to a head: a local ranchhand who shoots a wolf faces prosecution under the Endangered Species laws, while a reclusive artist whom Alix represents has contributed to the auction a haunting portrait of a wolf, a painting that the committee chair refuses to allow in. (The sad-looking wolf on this book's dust jacket lacks the ferociousness of the wolf portrait.) The strong feelings that the wolf engenders are backdrop for the actual mystery: the painter, concerned about a possible cover-up, asks Alix to look into the death of a teenage boy in a hunting accident 25 years ago. It's a familiar pattern—a long-ago mystery resurfacing to become entangled with present conflicts—and, because of that familiarity, requires a particularly deft hand. Unfortunately, the uneven plot lurches forward in fits and starts like a car engine badly in need of a tune-up. The primary mystery is resolved offstage, and never fully explained. A small backstory involving Alix as a child goes nowhere. All this transpires in one of the most beautiful spots on earth, but the landscape, sadly, is all but invisible. Agent, Curtis Brown. (Aug. 27)
FYI:McClendon is also the author of
One O'clock Jump (Forecasts, Feb. 12).
