PISCES RISING

Elizabeth Chase (Aquarius Rising, 1998, etc.), a psychic detective, is dragged out of bed and out of grief-stricken depression

after the death of her fianc‚ to investigate the gruesome murder of a Native American casino owner, Dan Aquillo. Aquillo was bludgeoned to death, then scalped, and Bill Hurston, a gambler deep in debt, is found comatose from an overdose of tranquilizers—in the same room as the corpse. Hurston is arrested, and Chase agrees to work on his defense. Her intuitive reading of him is that he’s innocent. Political and personal motives for murder surround the dead man. The question of running casinos divides the Indian community, and Aquillo was a leading proponent of legalized gambling. His nephew, a bitterly disaffected youth called Wolf, belongs to the anti-gambling coalition. Aquillo's girlfriend, a blackjack dealer who was two-timing him with his business partner, knew Hurston from years back. And Aquillo's business partner thought he was getting the other half of the casino in the will. While sorting through the suspects, Chase is sent a mentor, Sequoia, a young Native American shaman. A cross between Gen X and The X- Files, Sequoia determines the obvious: Chase needs to recover from her grief and protect herself from the bad guys. He watches out for her himself on his frequent out-of-body trips around the reservation. Meanwhile, Hurston's ex-wife goes missing and so does the scalp. In the end, with the help of her dog and a dream vision, Chase closes in on the killer. Chase's role as a psychic detective promises more than it delivers. Neither especially psychic or clever, she energetically

stumbles about, missing clues and awaiting signs.