Black Widows by Cate Quinn

 

Black Widows by Cate Quinn - 419 pages

Polygamist Blake Nelson built a homestead on a hidden stretch of land—a raw paradise in the wilds of Utah—where he lived with his three wives:

Rachel, the first wife, obedient and doting to a fault, with a past she'd prefer to keep quiet. Tina, the rebel wife, everything Rachel isn't, straight from rehab and the Vegas strip. And Emily, the young wife, naïve and scared, estranged from her Catholic family.

The only thing that they had in common was Blake. Until all three are accused of his murder.

When Blake is found dead under the desert sun, all three wives become suspect—not only to the police, but to each other. As the investigation draws them closer, each wife must decide who can be trusted. With stories surfacing of a notorious cult tucked away in the hills, whispers flying about a fourth wife, and evidence that can't quite explain what had been keeping Blake busy, the three widows face a reckoning that might shatter all they know to be true.

This book keeps you guessing the whole time, you'll not want to put it down!

Death in the Covenant by D.A. Bartley

Death in the Covenant: An Abish Taylor Mystery by D.A. Bartley --- 310 pages

The Mormon Church is experiencing a demographic crisis in this second book featuring Detective Abish Taylor of the Pleasant View, Utah Police Department.  Disillusioned young men are abandoning the Church and leaving young Mormon women unable to fulfill their sacred obligation to marry and bear children to strengthen the Church for the final Battle. The Apostles, twelve men who advise the Prophet and form the governing Council of the Church, disagree on how to fix this problem. Some urge a return to the polygamy once practiced in the Church's early years, despite laws and public  opprobrium that brought the Church into disrepute then.

Detective Abish “Abbie” Taylor, a lapsed member of the Church, returned home after the premature death of her husband, hoping for a quiet life and a chance to start over. Instead she finds herself drawn into a clash of wills with the secretive, male hierarchy that dominates the Church and demands absolute, unthinking obedience from church members. One night she is called out to the scene of a fatal car accident, where she discovers the victim is one of the Apostles and an old friend of her father's --- Heber Bentsen.

Abbie is skeptical at first when her father, a respected LDS historian, mentions that Bentsen was recently inquiring about the whereabouts of a number of young women who abruptly dropped out of their graduate studies program to undertake special "missions" for the Church.  Following a hunch, she tracks the women and finds they have all recently crossed into Mexico not far from an old established LDS colony. Abbie takes a few days off from her job and heads to the Colonia Juárez, where she uncovers a plan to “seal” young women to church leaders in temple ceremonies. The children born of these "marriages" are then adopted by Mormon families in the United States.

Now Abbie possesses dangerous knowledge that poses a challenge to these men and their plans, and soon the threats begin. Abbie realizes her investigation could cost her father his job and his good standing in the Church.  It could cost her her own job.  It could even cost her her life.

This book is better written than Bentley's debut novel, Blessed Be the Wicked. It makes for a more compelling read. A significant amount of the plot however, still turns on Bentley's allegations about the beliefs and credulity of  ordinary Mormons and accusations about the Church's leadership. It's not the first time that a religious sect has been portrayed in lurid colors and won't be the last.

Click HERE to read the * review in Publishers Weekly.

Click HERE to read the review from Kirkus Reviews.

Click HERE to read the  review and author profile from MysterySuspenseReviews.com