MESA VERDE VICTIM

The potential discovery of priceless artifacts from the Ancestral Puebloan people leads an archaeologist down a cash trail among the canyons.

An expert in archaeology in the Four Corners region, where Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah meet, Chuck Bender is an obvious suspect when his former colleague Barney Keller is shot and killed. The death of Barney, whom everyone describes as a good guy, makes no sense until Chuck does some digging, figurative and literal, into Barney’s latest work. It seems that his tales of Ancestral Puebloan canopic jars might just be true, and the discovery of these organ-holding vessels used in the mummification process would be quite a find for an archaeologist—or a salesman. Because Chuck once dated Sandra Kingsley, the lead officer on the case, he trusts that Sandra’s sure of his innocence even though he’s a suspect. His wife, Janelle, maintains that Sandra’s faith in Chuck is rooted in lingering feelings, and she may be right, but Chuck would never let that distract him from his family or his mission to find the killer. His knowledge of the Mesa Verde canyons and cliffs inspires his fearless teenage stepdaughters, Carmelita and Rosie, who take turns trying to help him while acting as a surrogate audience asking questions his vast archaeological knowledge allows him to answer. What they find among the rocks marries modern times to an 1800s discovery that foreshadows the very same crime.

An expert look at the great outdoors seamlessly incorporated with a focus on the hero’s family.