The Great Reminder
A Moroni Traveler Novel
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
Major Lewis Stiles is dying of cancer, but he wants all his affairs in order before he is “called home.” To that end he wants to hire Moroni Traveler and his father, Martin, to track down one of the prisoners he was responsible for during World War II. Unseen since his mysterious disappearance from the POW camp at Cowdery Junction, Utah, Karl Falke is still owed $132.07 in back pay, and Stiles wants Falke to receive his due. Knowing the chances of success are slim to none, Moroni is reluctant, but ever a soft touch for lost causes he takes the case. The search seems innocent enough, but as with any investigation in the promised land, the Travelers soon run up against the Latter-day Saints. Moroni’s childhood friend Willis Tanner, now a high-level bureaucrat in the church, continues to poke his nose into Traveler business, this time with the added incentive of keeping the prophet’s niece Lael Woolley out of trouble. While grappling with issues of family and responsibility, Moroni realizes that the answers to riddles from the past are to be found in the small towns and silent graveyards of Utah.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A gentile in a world of Saints, Salt Lake City private eye Moroni Traveler doesn't follow the Mormon religion into which he was born, yet it determines the course of his every case. In this, his sixth appearance (after The Spoken Word ), Moroni is hired by an old-timer who wants to pay a debt before he dies to a man who may himself have died long ago. Utah housed camps for captured Germans during WW II; a number of prisoners working on local farms died or disappeared under mysterious circumstances. One such prisoner vanished with his wages outstanding, leaving Moroni's elderly client, a former accountant, troubled for nearly half a century. Powerful local Mormons, however, take a dim view of meddling with the dead, or even with those only likely to be so. To further complicate the search for the missing prisoner, Moroni and his father, who is also his partner, trail a missing child who may be the younger PI's son. Although his sketchy depiction of Mormon culture--and of a few secondary characters--may interfere with new readers' enjoyment, Irvine expertly unravels a skein of decades-old mysteries in a satisfying addition to his unusual, solid series.
