The Arizona Triangle
A Jo Bailen Detective Novel
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4.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
In the vein of the bestselling California noirs of Sue Grafton and Sara Gran, a whodunnit about loyalty, love, and the legacy of trauma featuring a hardboiled, queer private eye whose latest case takes her deep into her own complicated past.
On the cusp of forty, Justine Bailen, better known as Jo, works for an all-female detective agency based in Tucson, Arizona. While staking out a cheating spouse, she learns that her long-estranged best friend from childhood, Rose, is missing, and that Rose’s mother wants to hire Jo to find her. This case is all kinds of wrong for Jo, but she has no choice but to head back to her hometown, an hour north and a world away from Tucson.
Back in Delphi, she learns that her high school boyfriend, Tyler—who is probably part of the reason her friendship with Rose went south—is the cop assigned to the case. It doesn’t take long for Jo to realize that he’s all mixed up in it, too. To have any hope of learning the truth about Rose’s disappearance, Jo must finally face the demons she thought she’d escaped.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this accomplished if underheated series launch from Graves (a pseudonym for Welcome Home, Stranger author Kate Christensen), Arizona private eye Justine "Jo" Bailen navigates a looming midlife crisis while digging into the disappearance of her estranged childhood best friend, Rose Delaney. While staking out an infidelity case brought to her all-female detective agency, Jo learns that Rose has gone missing; soon, Rose's mother, Laura, hires Jo to investigate. The inquiry takes Jo back to Delphi, the artists' colony north of Tucson where she and Rose grew up. Returning home brings Jo face to face with decades-old traumas, including her distant relationship with her mother and the love triangle involving Jo's high school boyfriend, Tyler, that destroyed her and Rose's friendship—which becomes especially pertinent when Tyler, now a police officer, gets assigned to Rose's case. Graves skillfully depicts the flawed utopia of her desert setting and wrings affecting insights from Jo's struggles with aging, but the core mystery never totally takes flight. For genre readers more interested in character and atmosphere than plot, however, Graves's dazzling prose and well-drawn heroine make this well worth seeking out.
