Review
Title: Death Valley Duel
Author: Scott Graham
Year Published: 2024
Publisher: Torrey House Press
Genre: Fiction, Mystery
Format: Paperback
ISDN: 9781948814959
Price: $16.95
Pages: 250
Reviewed by Kevin Folkman for the Association for Mormon Letters
Most readers will appreciate the sense of familiarity that comes from reading fiction with accurate descriptions of places they have visited and seen in a kind of literary déjà vu. Environmental activist and author Scott Graham has created an entire series of mystery novels based on the West’s popular national parks. In each of the novels in his National Park Mystery series, Graham places his narrative directly in actual settings that are readily familiar to many readers. The first in this series, Canyon Sacrifice, takes place in Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona, a place that many readers have visited in person or vicariously through magazine and/or digital images.
Death Valley Duel is Graham’s ninth in this series, which also includes river rafting in Canyonlands National Park in Canyonlands Carnage, the encroachment of mining on Arches National Park in Arches Enemy or Yellowstone Standoff in our nation’s first National Park. All these stories feature archaeologist and outdoorsman Chuck Bender, his paramedic Latina wife Janelle, and her two children from a previous marriage. In Death Valley Duel, Chuck is combining archaeological research into a century-old murder with his oldest daughter’s 150-mile ultra-marathon race from Mount Whitney through the Owens Valley and into Death Valley itself.
The pairing of the century-old murder mystery with the challenges facing his teenage daughter makes a fascinating backdrop for a contemporary crime story. Even as Chuck tries to find and preserve evidence relevant to the murder of a Native American activist from a hundred years ago, his daughter faces both the physical and mental challenges of a grueling ultra-marathon and someone who seems to be sabotaging the race and endangering its participants for reasons unknown.
As Chuck moves back and forth between his archaeological research and supporting his daughter Carmelita, there is tension and conflict at every turn. Equally divided between his daughter’s perspective as a race participant and Chuck’s desire to find justice for an almost forgotten murder victim, the two stories weave back and forth against the richly described landscape of Death Valley. Along the way, we learn about the environmental issues that have helped to create the landscape, both past and present. As a reader, you will cheer Carmelita along on her race even as you hope that Chuck is able to preserve vital evidence to find justice in the century-old murder.
Graham’s description of the landscape of Death Valley is compelling, and he deals with such issues as the desertification of the Owens Valley by the water demands of Los Angeles, the so-called wandering rocks that seem to move mysteriously across Death Valley’s desert floor, and current threats to nearby Mono Lake and its unique scenery. In all Death Valley Duel is a fun read and may well hook you into wanting to read the other titles in this series.