Wind and Lies: A Joshua Rabb Novel

This fourth in the Joshua Rabb courtroom suspense series (The Dividing Line, Versions of the Truth, Nothing but the Truth), pits the disabled Jewish lawyer for the Bureau of Indian Affairs against a slew of racist bad old boys in post WWII Tucson. Chief among them is the polygamous patriarch of a Mormon sect who takes 12-year-old girls as ""wives"" and attempts to recruit followers from the oppressed Pagago Indian Reservation. But when a beautiful Native American woman is murdered and mutilated, the machinery of justice focuses on Joshua's boss and best friend at the bureau of Indian Affairs, Ed Hendly. Although there's a strong narrative here, the novel's stock characters, windy rhetoric and blood lust for vengeance undercut its politically correct message. (Feb.)