A Killing in Zion

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. Agent: Steve Ross, Abrams Artists Agency. (Sept.)