
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
The fifth Nora Kelly novel feels like a throwback to some of Preston & Child’s best scary stories, especially way back in their earlier days like in Still Life With Crows. It also verges on X Files territory, particularly with its emphasis on the ruins and artifacts of Indigenous peoples in New Mexico, from the Chaco to the Ancestral Pueblo to the Gallina, and of course the Navajo, with an old woman of that tribe getting a laugh out of Nora and Corrie’s clumsy attempts at speaking her language. Though they aren’t Native Americans, Preston & Child take great care to depict various tribal cultures past and present with sensitivity, which is more than I can say for the ultimate villains of this book. Without spoilers, let’s just say there really is a special hell for cultural appropriators and they deserve it.
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