Customer Reviews

Dead Dry (Em Hansen Mysteries)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

First her neighbor Fritz Calder comes to get forensic geologist Em Hansen to accompany him for breakfast when Salt Lake City Police Detective Thomas "Ray" Raymond arrives to have Em look at a nearby corpse. Though the victim is buried under gravel from a collapsed quarry wall with only a leg is sticking out. Everyone of the workers has been accounted for so no one knows who the victim could be and why he was there.

Though the fingerprints are gone and his visage battered beyond recognition, Em recognizes a tattoo that enables her to identify the deceased as Colorado staunch environmentalist Afton McWain. Fritz flies her to Colorado to inform McWain's former spouse and her current female partner, who both deem they earned his ranch while development vultures circle the battling females coveting McWain's land. All the while Em digs into the dirt to find that trace of evidence that ties a Colorado killer to a Utah homicide.

The tenth Em Hansen, Utah's only forensic geologist, is a terrific who-done-it that keeps the audience following the heroine's delightful scientific explanations of the clues she finds that no one else understands. Her "romance" with Fritz still sputters, but that adds to the overall fun of observing this consummate professional in the field struggle with affairs of the heart. Though some sidebars are unneeded cul-de sacs, fans will appreciate Em's latest digging in the dirt gem.

Harriet Klausner

Forensic geologist Em Hansen is living in Salt Lake City, Utah, and working for the Utah Geological Survey when she is called in to help with a murder. A body has been found buried in a gravel pit and a wall of gravel has fallen on it.

Unfortunately, Em recognizes a tattoo on the body (not much else is recognizable) and it is someone she knows: a well-known geologist from Colorado, Afton McWain. Em knew both Afton and his geologist wife, Julia.

Michelle Aldrich, the sheriff's deputy in charge of the case, asks for her help in notifying McWain's now ex-wife in Denver. Em flies to Denver with her pilot friend Fritz Calder, and then becomes enmeshed in the investigation.

McWain owned a ranch in the Castle Rock/Sedalia area south west of Denver, and was involved in helping some anti-development people in the area stop more houses and golf courses being built. One of the possible developments was the ranch right next to his, and they needed McWain's ranch for an easement.

McWain had been an expert and made a lot of money in oil exploration. He was retired, but interested in ground-water research. Wells for both homes and ranches in the area were drying up; the water table was getting lower and lower, and the finite water resources were being used up at a prodigious rate. There are many possible suspects in McWain's death: an attorney, a developer, a banker, and Gilda, the strange woman he had lived with on the ranch since he divorced Julia.

Andrews is known for her fascinating explanations of geology, and this book does not disappoint. Her description of the area around Denver and the water problems the area faces is riveting. She is a professional geologist and a licensed pilot, in addition to being an award-winning author.

My favorite earlier titles are Earth Colors, about pigment analysis of a Frederick Remington painting; and Fault Lines, a story of a possible murder during an earthquake.

Armchair Interviews says: This is the tenth Em Hansen mystery and will again thrill her fans.

Really deserves a 2.5, but there's no rating for that, so I rounded up. This one was better than the frighteningly dreadful "Killer Dust" and the almost-but-not-quite-as-bad "Earth Colors". As a practicing hydrogeologist, I found the plot somewhat implausible and the science somewhat "fluffy". Like another reviewer, I also wondered why a homicide detective would drag Em along into the investigation-I also question whether or not Utah (or any other state) has a "state forensic geologist". And if they did, it would probably be someone with better qualifications than an entry level geologist with only a master's degree.

Aside from these points, the book was OK, although the characters seemed one dimensional and the plot pretty weak. Oh, and the storyline involving the ex-fiancee Ray, was very strange and didn't really seem to contribute to the plot (or anything else.

It started out with a little too much detail (and I'm a geologist!) but I think it's her best book yrt.

This Em Hanson, Utah geologist and amateur detective, mystery is a bit too much of a lecture on the geography/water issues of Colorado. The geology and water discussions were a bit interesting, but overdone. THis is a mystery, after all, not a book about the geology of Colorado. Still, I found myself yearning for Colorado as I read the book (hadn't been there in years). This book and another Colorado-setting mystery prompted me to go there for a short vacation (I just came back).

The idea that the police would have a forensic geologist and that they would want her to get involved in solving a mystery is just too ridiculous. I also thought there was way too much men-in-Em's-life- talking-about-Em. I think the author is in love with her character and has idealized her as this woman that men are longing for while she ducks a commitment. Enough already. I like some romance in a mystery, but these long sections of men analyzing Em's character should have been edited out.

The plot involves a professional acquaintance of Em who dies in the area that Em lives in (he's from Colorado, she lives in Utah). Em knows the man's wife and goes with the police to break the news etc. After that, she gets involved in solving this murder.

All in all, the author needed to spend more time (and pages) on the mystery (more twists and turns) and less on lectures on Colorado and men musing about Em.

This is not the best of the series.

I was very disappointed in the book (and this series). I thought I had found a new author to read but it turns out these are just romance novels dressed up as "mysteries". Romance readers should like them.

In this new Em Hansen mystery, Sarah Andrews manages to recapture the charm of the earlier books in the series, and gotten past the dreadful Killer Dust. Hansen finally has a full-time job, working for the Utah Geological Survey, which adds some plausibility to her consulting work with Utah law enforcement. She is brought in when a body is found crushed at a gravel quarry, which leads Hansen and a female detective to Colorado, where a plot involving real estate development and dry wells ensues. It's still not clear why the police would want Hansen to be so intimately involved in a murder investigation, and interestingly another forensic geologist appears in this novel who does some geology that is more crucial to the investigation than anything that Hansen does. Her ex-fiancee, Ray, is back in a rather srange sub-plot. Nonetheless, the book is entertaining and does supply insights into groundwater geology. The scientifically interested reader should not put too much stock in Andrews' misleading discussion of thunderstorms, however.