A Killing in Zion
A Mystery
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
In the scorching, drought-plagued summer of 1934, as wildfires burn across Utah, Detective Lieutenant Art Oveson faces a unique assignment. Salt Lake City's mayor has tapped him to revive the Anti-Polygamy Squad, a unit formed years earlier for the purpose of driving out the city's "plural marriage zealots." As a Mormon ashamed of his own ancestors' part in the church's polygamist past, Art is eager to do his part to flush out the extremists.
Then a local polygamist "prophet" is brutally murdered and a shell-shocked young girl is found at the scene of the crime. Is she the victim's daughter, a child bride, or the murderer herself? Art attempts to investigate the death, as well as discover her identity, despite a "wall of silence" put up by polygamists who would rather mete out their own rough justice. Soon, however, Art discovers that the sect has much more to hide than he thought.
Historian and Hillerman Prize-winning author of City of Saints Andrew Hunt returns to 1930s Salt Lake City in this deeply researched mystery. A Killing in Zion portrays a city and a religion struggling to grow and shake off a notorious history that has not yet become a thing of the past.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hunt's excellent second mystery featuring Art Oveson lives up to the promise of his Hillerman Prize winning debut, City of Saints (2012). In 1934, Oveson is promoted to head the Anti-Polygamy Squad, a high-profile police unit that works to demonstrate to the world that the Mormons of Salt Lake City have left polygamy in their distant past. Art has been fruitlessly tailing the leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Saints, LeGrand Johnston, until one day Art hears shots fired outside the polygamist's temple and finds both Johnston and his bodyguard murdered. The polygamists are a tight-knit and uncooperative group, but Art discovers hints in the ensuing investigation that the illegal multiple marriages are the least of their crimes. The team learns of child brides, land swindles, and bodies in the desert outside of the town that the fundamentalist Mormons own in southern Utah. Hunt builds the action at a satisfying pace with surprising twists and revelations throughout. Readers will cheer a hero who is not only a fine policeman but also a family man with a strong moral compass.
