Sinister Graves (A Cash Blackbear Mystery)
When the winter snows of Northern Minnesota melt, the Red River Valley becomes a giant moving lake. One April in the 1970s, the river flood carries the body of a young Native American woman far from her likely home. County Sheriff Wheaton asks Renee (Cash) Blackbear to look at the corpse. Cash, a 19-year-old Ojibwe woman, has been Wheaton’s ward for years after he saved her from yet one more foster home. Through dreams, visions, or feelings, she has helped Wheaton on other cases.
Pages of a hymn written in both English and Ojibwe sit tucked in the dead woman’s bra. They send chills through Cash and suggest the woman might have lived on a reservation over in North Dakota. Cash starts snooping and searching. Soon she follows a risky trail to a second dead Native American woman, a missing baby, and a fundamentalist church whose minister and wife may know more.
As a murder mystery, this novel has no unusual plot twists. Rendon gives readers early clues to what happened and why. The engaging main character, Cash, makes this story resonate. After surviving a rough childhood, she has become both needy and strong. She taught herself to become a pool hustler, which keeps her in enough money to get by. She chain-smokes, can drink most others under the table, and loves, perhaps too easily. She’s also a reader and excellent student (though she often skips class) and has a way of connecting with most strangers. The secondary characters hold the reader’s interest, too. Towns in the wide prairie, small businesses and pool halls, and muddy rutted roads provide a realistic setting. Recommended for readers wanting a character-driven murder mystery.
