THE HOSANNA SHOUT

Salt Lake City detective Moroni Traveler (The Great Reminder, 1993, etc.) has two pro bono problems: how to rescue his office building from the wrecker's ball, and where to find the rumored child who looks like his father Martin's last best hope for a grandson. There doesn't seem much of a prayer for the Chester Building. It's widely assumed that the muscle behind the holding company that's been buying up the block is the Mormon church, which has unlimited de facto powers of eminent domain in the state; not even the demented opposition of Mad Bill, the Sandwich Prophet, or the rumor that the ceiling mural of Brigham Young is by Thomas Hart Benton seems likely to save the building from being turned into a temple parking lot. The hunt for Moroni Jr., whom Traveler's former lover Claire Bennion had taunted him with shortly before she died, looks like a change of pace, but when the search leads to ghostly Bingham Canyon, a burned-out mining town Kennicott Copper is looking to legislate into official extinction, the Travelers find themselves up against the same old eminent demons. Homicide eventually comes into the story on a large scale, but almost as an afterthought; the sins of individuals clearly don't hold the same fascination for Irvine as the forces they represent. Irvine's patient, austere etching of contemporary Utah—he must have one of the least ingratiating styles in the business—is less intent, as usual, on developing a story than on evoking a world uniquely his own.