DESERT REMAINS
The IRB's Celebrating 10 Years of Intelligent Reviews October 2007-October 2017 Fiction Family betrayals DESERT REMAINS A Gus Parker and Alex Mills Novel By Steven Cooper 400 pp. Seventh Street Books Reviewed by Eric Petersen A new mystery writer makes his debut with the first in a series of mysteries featuring an unusual pair of sleuths. The novel opens with Phoenix homicide detective Alex Mills at the scene of an unusual crime. A young woman named Elizabeth Spears has been brutally murdered, her body deliberately placed in a cave in the Arizona desert. Her meticulous killer left behind no murder weapon or incriminating evidence of any kind – only a bizarre calling card. Carved into the cave wall is a huge mural depicting the murder and the victim’s last agonizing moments of life. Alex Mills has never seen anything like it, nor have his fellow detectives – not even star detective Timothy Chase, who used to work as a criminal profiler for the FBI. To help solve this ghastly and baf...