Dead Mountain by Douglas PrestonMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
The latest mystery for Nora Kelly and Corrie Swanson is quite an adventurous one, once again tackling some mysterious deaths high in the mountains - this time, in the Manzano Mountains of central New Mexico. Tackling a cold case - in more ways than one - of dead missing hikers in one of the highest caves in the range quickly leads to Nora running afoul of the long arm of the corrupt law, as a nastily racist sexist shitheel sheriff tries to railroad her and her brother while they try to explore the remains ethically, since they're also in close proximity to ancient Native American burial grounds. Preston and Child, for the climbers, took inspiration from a strange incident in Soviet Russia, for which Preston was actually about to sign up for film rights before Russia invaded Ukraine and the studios decided to abandon the project. But being set in New Mexico, they get to incorporate some mysterious radiation, since they're so close to the site of the Trinity test and all...and in parallel to the Manhattan Project is a fictional, but eerily plausible, conspiracy theory in universe about the "Boston Project" of supersoldier experiments with Yeti DNA. (Be glad Steve Rogers was nowhere near this project.) Naturally, since their Relic days are behind them, Preston and Child come up with more earthbound explanations for what has happened, but that doesn't make this mystery any less interesting for it.
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