Description:
Elizabeth Chase is a psychic detective whose hunches and visions have helped the authorities solve a number of baffling crimes. But by the time of her fourth outing in Lawrence's increasingly popular series (The Cold Heart of Capricorn, Murder in Scorpio, Aquarius Descending), Chase is a reluctant sleuth. Her lover has been killed in a showdown between cult leaders and the FBI, and she no longer trusts her own extrasensory gifts. But when an old friend asks for help in solving the murder and scalping of a casino owner at Mystic Mesa on the Temecu Indian reservation in the California desert, Elizabeth is persuaded to get involved. She soon finds herself drawn to a charismatic--and strangely familiar--Native American shaman whose strange gifts awaken and energize her own. Bill Hurston, a doctor with a gambling problem, is the chief suspect in the murder of his closest friend, Dan Aquillo. Aquillo's mutilated body was found with the comatose Hurston after his unsuccessful suicide attempt. It seems like an open-and-shut case, until Hurston's former wife is also killed and Aquillo's scalp is found hanging in the tree under which her body was buried. Is there a connection between the two murders and a campaign to limit Indian gaming instigated by Las Vegas gambling interests? Could Aquillo's hotheaded young nephew, who also opposes reservation gambling and hates what it has done to his tribe, be responsible for the scalping--and for the attack on Elizabeth? And is there a connection between Sequoia, the shaman who rescues Elizabeth, and her dead lover? Lawrence spins a taut, dramatic tale, aided by a sympathetic and likable protagonist; it doesn't take tea leaves or crystal balls to predict that this psychic detective will turn up again. --Jane Adams
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