Arches Enemy: A National Park Mystery

Graham’s workmanlike fifth whodunit featuring archeologist Chuck Bender (after 2018’s Yosemite Fall) takes Bender and his family—paramedic wife Janelle Ortega and two stepdaughters—to Utah’s Arches National Park, where Bender has been hired to study a pictograph considered to be “the most detailed example of Ancestral Puebloan storytelling ever discovered.” Meanwhile, the park’s Landscape Arch has collapsed, apparently as a result of shock waves from seismic pounding conducted by those “trolling for underground deposits of oil and natural gas.” A jogger also died in the collapse. When Bender finds evidence that someone planned to blow up the arch, and two more people die, he again turns detective. His task is complicated by the possible role in the mystery of his scam artist mother, Sheila, whom Janelle and his stepdaughters have never met. Graham fails to make the most of his promising setup, and the contrived mechanism by which Bender escapes harm toward the end will elicit eye-rolls. Those interested in national parks and the environmental threats to them will be rewarded. (June)