Customer Reviews

Desert Cut (Lena Jones Mysteries (Paperback))

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
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"I'm not a nice girl," Lena Jones declares on the first page of the first book (Desert Wives) in this outstanding mystery series by Betty Webb, built around controversial darkside themes. By the time Desert Cut, Lena's fifth dilemma comes along, she still isn't. And it's a good thing.

Lena is a been-there woman. She needs all the experience she has as an ex-cop and now Scottsdale PI. One perfect morning she and her colleague/companion Warren Quinn are enjoying a pleasant ride across the Arizona desert when they make a stunning and horrifying discovery--the body of a girl-child. Is she the victim of an illegal border crossing gone wrong, or more, or worse?

Once again former investigative reporter Betty Webb shows her skills in spinning a fascinating story around a tough topic.

Webb is a fine place-writer. Her descriptions of the desert landscape and the people shaped by it alone recommend the book. But the culture is changing. There are more than the relationships between the Native American, the Anglos and the Hispanics. There is yet another wave of newcomers as burgeoning job opportunities attract workers from halfway around the world.

Herein lays the conflict. For the lovely child, the dead girl, was not abandoned after an accidental death, but is the victim of a brutal and unspeakable crime. So unspeakable that local sheriff refuses to give Lena the cause of death--for a time. Lena is persistent not only in gaining that knowledge but in pursuing the truth until all is understood. In the process, Lena learns more about herself and discovers more about her own tangled background.

The book is not all heavy going. There are flashes of the glitzy world of Beverly Hills when Lena flies over to her consulting job on a television Western, and as we learn of Warren's day job as an Oscar-winning Hollywood director. Plenty of humor sparks out as well.

Still, Webb reveals, as is sometimes best done in fiction, some eye-opening facts about this nameless crime. And she names it--female genital mutilation or amputation. Terrifying yes, but something every person needs to know of and understand in our changing culture.

Webb ends the book with two appendices (one with explicit language) and a bibliography on the subject. She's serious about this.

I recommend this book, both for the quality of the story and for the essential and painful information, but the reader should not pick it up unaware.

by Patricia Nordyke Pando

for Story Circle Book Reviews

reviewing books by, for, and about women

Scottsdale PI Lena Jones, in four previous appearances, has tackled some different and interesting and controversial topics, ranging from polygamy, the homeless and a former WWII German POW camp. In this latest novel, she uncovers horrific subject one knows about in Africa and the Middle East, but hardly comes to mind in the United States.

While horseback riding with her boyfriend scouting a film location in the Arizona desert, Lena finds the body of a seven-year-old girl. It turns out there are other young girls either missing or dead from a nearby town. Many of the inhabitants work for a chemical factory there, and are African or Middle Eastern immigrants. Lena can't get the thought of the little girl she found in a shallow grave from her mind, and starts her own investigation. Eventually, she ties together a common thread for all the dead and missing young girls, and a horrific one it is.

As in the previous books in the series, the plot is meticulously researched, with an outstanding bibliography, carefully written and documented, and the writing and story substantial. While constructed as a mystery, the novel is truly more important than the genre.

Highly recommended.

Author Julia Spencer-Fleming calls DESERT CUT harrowing and thought-provoking...spiked with social outrage...a book that will remain with you a long time. Author David Morrell says people will talk about if for a long time to come. I could not agree more. This book does what the best crime fiction can do; it entertains, enlightens and educates. The subject matter is as current as the immigration issues. And all who read it will have cause to reflect upon what it means to be an American in this day and age. This book will surely attract awards attention! Betty Webb's blend of fine writing and investigative journalism just gets better with each book. And DESERT CUT is a book I will remember well 20 years from now.

5th in the Lena Jones mystery series by Betty Webb. I thought this was the best, by far, of all the mysteries Webb has written in this series to date. The writing was tight, the plot held together all the way through the book, the characters continue to develop well. The romantic relationship Jones continues in this book with the movie producer was much more believable, also.

Webb always has a hot topic that she champions or fights against in this series and this book surely follows that pattern. A warning to some readers that there is graphic information in the actual book and in the author's note and appendices at the end of the book. But the information provided, though shocking and horrific, is very relevant.

"Control women and you control the world" is a quote from one of the men in the book and control of women and Lena's fight against this in one way or another seems to be a common theme in Webb's books. I highly recommend this book. The subject matter in the book is some that all informed adults should be aware of and do their utmost to fight against. If you have a daughter, I would imagine this book will impact you especially hard.

All the books in Betty Webb's Desert series featuring PI Lena Jones have been very good. They are tied together by the mystery of Jones' background and her developing personal relationships, while each has an individual theme in the mystery Jones is focused on solving.

This one has a theme that is not for the squeamish. That does not make it less important as a social issue.

If the series has any drawback, it would lie in the often thinly veiled hostility towards government-employed law enforcement personnel.

Private investigator Lena Jones and Oscar-winning documentary director Warren Quinn seek locations for the latter to film late nineteenth century Apache Wars. To their horror, they find a mutilated corpse of a small child that the Cochise County medical examiner sadly calls "Precious Doe". Lena, who suffered child abuse from the foster homes she grew up in, takes it personally as this angel could not have been more than seven years old; she vows to find justice for the child.

Her investigation takes Lena to the nearby town of Los Perdidos where the descendents of the founders are armed for war against illegal aliens coming in from Mexico just like their ancestors were fighting Geronimo. As Lena keeps digging angering the generational locals although supported by legal immigrants working at a nearby plant, two more young girls vanish. Lena refuses to quit, but the more she learns the more confused she becomes as she starts to believe there is a conspiracy that crosses racial and religious lines to keep females subservient or worse; but the disappearances make no sense as they seem deliberate.

As Lena continues to uncover more about her infant abandonment, fans of the Desert saga (see DESERT NOIR, DESERT WIVES, DESERT SHADOWS and DESERT RUN) will enjoy her latest thriller that takes a fascinating spin on Southwest immigration. The story line is driven by the heroine who seeks to insure the young are safe unlike her own past. Interestingly, being a legal immigrant with documentation means nothing when corrupted power needs a fall guy because immigration has become tied to 9/11 (as if it was illegal Mexicans who hijacked the four planes). Betty Webb provides another strong whodunit with her usual thought provoking underlying social message that America is only as strong as our weakest.

Harriet Klausner

Another thought provoking mystery from Betty Webb. Webb is an excellent writer. I have a hard time putting down her novels. But the fact that she mixes in such thought provoking current issues with her mysteries makes her a unique and amazing writer.

Lena Jones, a former Scottsdale, Arizona policewoman now a Private Investigator is a fascinating character herself. Flashbacks to the mysteries of her childhood populate Webb's books. That Jones has endured a horrific childhood allows her to be appropriately sympathetic to the young victims she encounters. While I don't want to give away what Jones discovers in Los Perdidos, I want you to know that this book will haunt you. Next up: Desert Lost.

Since I enjoyed Ms. Webb's novel, "Anteater of Death," Anteater of Death: A Zoo Mystery I eagerly read the first book I could locate at my local library in her prior Desert series, "Desert Cut." Her writing style is clear, concise, and a pleasure to read, most likely a result of her years working as a journalist. The plot does not drift and the personal life of the main character, Lena Jones, is detailed without taking too much time away from the mystery. I took a 1/2 star off the rating for the villain "spilling the beans" near the end, tying up the loose plot ends in the murderer's last scene, and a 1/2 star because I was pretty sure I had the murderer figured out about 2/3rds of the way through the book. However, this novel has a shocking revelation relating to the murder plot and deals with a great crime that I believe all women should be aware of. As a result, I am going to purchase several paperback copies and give them to my friends. This is an author who does not shy away from addressing tough topics, and, in this particular novel, does so with great care, leading the reader gently toward the great revelation of the true nature of the crime, which had me quite surprised.

A quick summary, without revealing anything, as why read a mystery if you know the plot ahead of time: Detective Lena Jones, dealing with her own traumatic childhood, is on vacation with her film maker boyfriend in southern Arizona when she stumbles across the body of a mutilated young girl. She clashes with Sheriff Avery of Los Perdidos, as her drive to find the murderer is an unwelcome intrusion into his own investigation and with Hollywood, where she is a script consultant, and badly needed to return to review the newest script of the TV show, "Desert Eagle." Her investigation also leads to entanglements with Reverend Hall's Freedom Temple, an odd cult, and with local child molesters. This is not a sweet cozy and deals with difficult topics, but with sensitivity.

An interesting aspect of the plot is, although the character, Lena Jones, must ferret out facts to solve the crime, she also learns that appearances can be deceiving, as she makes a false presumption regarding her relationship with her boyfriend, Warren, based on an event she witnesses. She learns that sometimes the facts are not what they appear to be.

This is the first Lena Jones novel I have read, and I eagerly look forward to going back and catching up on the other novels in this series that I have not yet read. Ms. Webb has won a new fan with her skillful writing and her courage to address tough topics.

I just finished Dessert Cut by Betty Webb it's her fifth Lena Jones Mystery - Lena is a Scottsdale Az. PI who has survived a gunshot to the head when she was a small girl and raised in the "system". This foray involved female genitalia mutilation, which used to be common in the Middle East (which I didn't know), and her fight to solve a little girls murder. If you haven't read her it will be worth your while to do so, she takes on a lot of today's socially conscious issues.