Three Marys: A Wild Horses Mystery

Small-town crime reporter Eleanor Wooley tracks a serial killer through the Sierra Nevada in Somers’s sturdy sequel to Eleven Stolen Horses. At the outset, Eleanor cuts her coverage of the Mother’s Day Rodeo in Gold Strike, Calif., short when word arrives of a wildfire raging nearby. The fuss is quickly followed by the discovery of a woman’s body submerged in Wild Bear River. Though some assume the victim died fleeing the blaze, signs of strangulation and flowers jammed in her mouth put Eleanor on the trail of a murderer. When another woman dies under similar circumstances, the community fears that a serial killer might be in their midst, and Eleanor tries to connect the dots between victims. Meanwhile, her romance with rancher Easton Jode deepens while the pair search for Goldenrod, a wild stallion mistakenly rounded up by the Bureau of Land Management. Somers makes up for her workmanlike prose with a palpable affection for rural life and formidable expertise on equine matters. The core mystery resolves in satisfying-enough fashion, but the real draw of this series is Somers’s depiction of life in a little-discussed corner of the Golden State. This gets the job done. (Mar.)