THE DEADLY CANYON
by Jake Page
Blind Santa Fe sculptor Mo Bowdre has been commissioned to design a monumental sculpture for the Desert Research Center in the Peloncillo Mountains—but he hasn't; he's really been drafted, after his success in recovering The Stolen Gods (1993), to help FBI agent Larry Collins round up a ring of pre-Columbian antiquities smugglers. Though too many of the leading suspects, regrettably, turn out to be guilty, there's much to admire along the way—from Mo's effortless deductions about why a panicky killer would want to hide the body of a herpetologist recruited by the FBI but leave a second corpse out in the open, to an edgy, compelling portrait of the bounty hunter who uses his company, Venom Enterprises, to get revenge when his woman is killed. Just enough mystery to give the engaging cast something to do while they're waiting for the final holocaust.