The Stone Hawk

Soon after Melinda Pink, British romance writer and mystery solver last seen in Snare , arrives at a ranch in the Utah canyon country, she becomes aware of an underlying tension that affects the small community. The uneasiness is somehow caused by two children: Birdie Estwick, a Ute Indian adopted by a white couple, and Shawn Brenner, fatherless child of an alcoholic. Birdie takes off alone on her pony to try to find Anasazi Indian ruins rumored to be hidden in one of the small side canyons. When Miss Pink joins in the search for the girl, she comes to know the canyons and the peril they could bring to the unwary. After Birdie's sexually mutilated body is discovered, Shawn indicates he saw the murderer and then disappears. While Moffat artfully depicts the close, intense atmosphere of a small community and the fears and hopes that tie its residents together, an odd sense of distance separates her feisty detective from the other characters and from one another. ( Nov. )