Desert Cut

Description
While scouting locations for a film documentary in Arizona, private investigator Lena Jones and director Warren Quinn discover the mutilated body of a young girl. The gruesome manner of the child's death evokes memories of Lena's own rough childhood. Clashing with the local law, Lena's investigation uncovers a small town with a big secret. Los Perdidos holds a significant population of documented foreign-born residents who live and work in the town's modern plant. Then two more girls disappear from Los Perdidos, and as the death toll mounts, Lena is tempted to implement some frontier justice of her own.

This was an interesting and somewhat complex story that was a bit slow until it became clear what was going on. Then the pace show more really picked up as Lena pushed to get the answers to who had killed the girls. Lena Jones is feisty, likable and a risk-taker when necessary. Betty Webb says that each of her books is inspired by a real case. This is the third book I’ve read in the series and I enjoyed it. show less

Betty Webb writes a mystery series about Lena Jones, a private investigator with a mysterious history of child abuse, amnesia, and foster homes. The mysteries sometimes revolve around child abuse cases. Her 2nd in the series, Desert Wives, was about the fundamentalist polygamous Mormon cults. It was published not long before Jon Krakauer's non-fiction Under the Banner of Heaven on the same topic, and the two books helped publicize the serious abuses going on in the name of those sects, which have in turn helped lead to the prosecution of Warren Jeffs and the recent raid on the sect in Texas.

In this series outing, Lena and her significant other find the body of a young girl in the Arizona desert. Lena, driven by her past, must be a part show more of the investigation, which leads to cases involving female genital mutilation. So, in other words, it is a rather dark story, but a powerful one, made even more powerful by the facts about FGM given in the author's notes at the end of the book. show less

a fast-paced, engrossing read. I read this for review for bookbrowse. I loved the setting and the main character, I am going out and finding the rest of the books in the series.