Death Assemblage (Frankie MacFarlane Mysteries) - Hardcover

Miller, Susan Cummins

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0896724816 ISBN 13: 9780896724815

Publisher: Texas Tech University Press, 2002

Synopsis

The first of the Frankie MacFarlane Series The mountains west of Pair-a-Dice, Nevada, hold mysteries geological, historical, and personal. Geologist Frankie MacFarlane has mapped the Paleozoic and Mesozoic sedimentary rocks of the range for the past three summers. In the final week of her dissertation fieldwork, she searches for an elusive final key to her research: a limestone marker bed―a death assemblage of fossil ammonoids―hidden by dangerous, shifting talus. But as Frankie strives to piece together her geologic jigsaw puzzle, the denizens of Pair-a-Dice, her base of operations, embroil her in a web of ancient and recent murders, a manhunt, kidnappings, and blackmail. A thirty-truck town, fifty miles from anywhere, Pair-a-Dice boasts two restaurants, three bars, seven pool tables, twenty-one slot machines, and a motley assemblage of misfits, including Diane Laterans, a punk schoolteacher who wears her Phi Beta Kappa key from her ear; Isabel Elorrio, crusty ex-marine and motel proprietor; Lon Bovey, rancher and would-be congressman; Walker, a mute handyman; the Anderson brothers, hooligans claiming kinship to infamous Bloody Bill; and a stranger, E. J. Killeen, U.S. Army, retired. Two bodies are discovered near Interstate 80, disrupting Frankie’s research. Are the killings linked to Killeen, to the new waitress in town, to Frankie’s ex-fiancé, who disappeared four months ago, or to older violence, the clues of which Frankie discovers in the mountains? Frankie’s environmental sensibilities and her grasp of geologic and human continuums make her truly a woman―and sleuth―of the new millennium.

About this title

About the Author

Susan Cummins Miller, a former field geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey and college instructor, is a research affiliate and SIROW Scholar with the University of Arizona’s Southwest Institute for Research on Women. In addition to the Frankie MacFarlane mysteries, she is the editor of A Sweet, Separate Intimacy: Women Writers of the American Frontier, 1800–1922 (TTUP, 2007). She lives in Tucson.

Reviews

Frankie MacFarlane hasn't come to derelict Pair-a-Dice, Nev., for its 21 slot machines, or even its three bars or seven pool tables; she's there for the rocks the ones she's surveying for her geology dissertation. But this heroine of a new series by geologist Susan Cummins Miller, inaugurated with the assured and erudite Death Assemblage, gets tangled up with the eccentrics of the truck-stop town when two recent murders seem tied to ancient violence that she's discovered in her geological research.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Near Pair-a-Dice, Nevada--a "thirty-truck town"--Francisca "Frankie" MacFarlane is unraveling a fossil puzzle that could bring her a professorship. Heading home, she finds human remains and encounters a stranger who warns her of a serial killer. Then her friend is murdered, and a manuscript that could be the key to solving the crime disappears. Frankie dodges death three times before she unravels the puzzle that links the fossils, the murder, and the manuscript. This fast-paced, edgy debut combines a suspenseful plot, well-drawn characters, and rich atmosphere. Although the pace slows some prior to the climax, and the geology is sometimes hard to follow--"death assemblage" is the paleonlogical term for fossils brought together after death--Miller vividly captures mountain and desert life, and she offers fascinating and unsettling insights into western history and the lives of ranchers. Recommend this to fans of Michael McGarrity's Kevin Kearney series, James Doss' Shaman novels, and Beverly Connor's archaeology thrillers. John Rowen
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Edition details

• Publisher: Texas Tech University Press
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0896724816
• ISBN 13: 9780896724815
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 216