TRAPLINE

Colorado’s stunningly beautiful Flat Tops Wilderness hides some nasty secrets.

When hunting guide Allison Coil and her boyfriend, Colin, arrive at their meeting with local businessman William Sulchuk, his teenage daughter and a few other friends at Lumberjack Camp, they learn that the group has discovered a badly mauled body. Although the corpse looks like the victim of a mountain lion attack, Allison has a bad feeling it may be something more sinister. After the remains are taken away for forensic examination, Allison scouts the area and comes upon a camp inhabited by surly men and surrounded by dog tracks. Down in the town of Glenwood Springs, local reporter Duncan Bloom is watching politician Tom Lamott give a speech when he runs into Allison’s friend Trudy Heath, whose organic food business, Down to Earth, he recently profiled. Focusing on developing a better relationship with Mexico, Lamott gives part of his speech in fluent Spanish. He pleases some of the crowd but not the local residents up in arms about the influx of Latinos, some illegal, they feel are taking jobs away from them and burdening local schools and social services. After Lamott is shot and critically wounded, the area is quickly overrun by the national media. One of Trudy’s Latino workers, snatched by unknown men, escapes, leaving Trudy to wonder what happened to him and combine forces with Duncan, who senses another good story. Allison, Colin, Duncan and Trudy end up uncovering a deep-rooted conspiracy that puts them all in danger.

Allison’s third adventure (Buried by the Roan, 2011, etc.) combines a loving portrait of a beautiful area with an ugly, all-too-believable conspiracy that could have been ripped from today’s headlines.