The Replacement Child: A Mystery [Hardcover]

Christine Barber (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 30, 2008

Late on a Monday night, editor Lucy Newroe answers the phone in the Capital Tribune newsroom. The caller is the notorious Scanner Lady---an anonymous elderly tipster whose hobby is to phone the newspaper with gossip from her police scanner. The old woman tells Lucy she heard two Santa Fe cops discussing a dead body. But when Lucy checks out the tip, she discovers Scanner Lady has been killed.
          She tries to enlist the help of Detective Gil Montoya, but his mind is on another death. He has just been handed the case of Melissa Baca, a seventh-grade teacher whose body was thrown off the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge. Over the course of the next few days, as Lucy and Gil hunt down the culprits in each murder, they discover their cases are intertwined in the most intimate ways.
          Rich with details of New Mexico and the people who live there, The Replacement Child is the perfect novel for anyone who has fallen in love with the Southwest that Tony Hillerman described so artfully in his Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee mysteries.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Billed as the first winner of the Tony Hillerman Prize for best debut mystery set in the Southwest, Barber's first novel is full of exquisite New Mexico scenery, but it's not enough to buoy a routine plot. Santa Fe newspaper editor Lucy Newroe usually ignores the calls from an old woman known as Scanner Lady with police scanner tidbits, but soon after Scanner Lady tells Lucy she overheard two cops discussing a dead body, Melissa Baca is found dead in a gorge outside the city. Det. Sgt. Gil Montoya strives to reconcile conflicting statements about Melissa's family and alleged drug use. Responding to an emergency call, Lucy, who also volunteers as a medic, finds the body of an elderly woman near a police scanner and fears her source has been murdered. Reluctantly joining forces, Lucy and Gil discover that the links between the two murders run deeper than they imagined. Like Lucy, Barber is a journalist and volunteer EMT; hopefully, she'll use this background to flesh out her heroine in a sequel. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Lucy Newroe, editor of the Capital Tribune, a Santa Fe newspaper, is given a tip from Scanner Lady, an anonymous reader who listens to her police scanner. That same night, the body of a young woman, Melissa Baca, is found at the bottom of a local bridge. When Scanner Lady is murdered, Lucy connects her tip with Baca’s murder and tries to convince the police to investigate the link. Santa Fe police detective Gil Montoya is called upon to work with the state police to help investigate the crime, and he and Lucy end up exchanging information. Lucy is also working reluctantly as a volunteer medic and dealing with her recent romantic breakup, while Gil worries about his mother and her health. A strong sense of the city of Santa Fe and its environs and the appeal of the two well-developed main characters show why this mystery was the first winner of the Tony Hillerman Prize for the best debut mystery set in the Southwest. --Sue O'Brien

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Minotaur Books; First Edition edition (September 30, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312385544
• ISBN-13: 978-0312385545
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,345,269 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A worthy successor to Tony Hillerman..., December 13, 2008

By 

Laurie Fletcher "Laurie Fletcher" (Casper, Wyoming, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Replacement Child: A Mystery (Hardcover)

Even as the sadness at the loss of Tony Hillerman is still fresh and painful, a worthy candidate as his successor has appeared. It seems as though he passed the mantle to Christine Barber personally: she's the first winner of the Tony Hillerman Prize.

In a story that could have come directly from his journalistic origins, Barber gives us Lucy Newroe, the Santa Fe Capital Tribune night editor who gets a strange and seemingly untraceable tip from an elderly lady who monitors the police band radio. Scanner Lady has heard something that may indicate police involvement with a crime, but everywhere Lucy turns there's a stone wall or worse. She gets the distracted attention of Detective Gil Montoya, but he's in deep with his own problem. A popular local schoolteacher has been thrown off the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge outside Taos. Could her rumor and his case have something in common?

This book chews up the Southwestern scenery and embraces the cultural quirks and characters that are New Mexico. Wouldn't you just know that Lucy is the type who compulsively returns misplaced items in the grocery store to their rightful place?

The richness of New Mexico's territorial history is just beneath the surface here, as well. This has all the hallmarks of Hillerman at his best.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Worthy Adversary, November 2, 2008

By 

Cerio - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Replacement Child: A Mystery (Hardcover)

I had entered my mystery novel in the Tony Hillerman Contest last year and was beaten out by "The Replacement Child." I was really hoping I'd hate the book, but it's a rich tale of woe and loss set in the sweeping New Mexico desert. It is easy to see why it won.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great story, November 2, 2008

By 

A. Katz - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Replacement Child: A Mystery (Hardcover)

This was a great book. I do live in New Mexico and happened upon this in the Collected Works bookstore in Santa Fe and bought it on a lark, even though I'm not a huge mystery reader. But this book just caught my attention because it's not just a mystery ... I love all the fantastic descriptions of people and places in the Land of Enchantment. The mystery itself is quirky and fast-paced and interwoven beautifully with the culture and idiosyncracies of this area. I passed it along to my mother, who also loved The Replacement Child. I hope we'll see more from this author.