Valley of Shadows: A Gus Parker and Alex Mills Mystery

Cooper’s vivid and complex third police procedural featuring Phoenix, Ariz., homicide detective Alex Mills and his friend and occasional collaborator, psychic Gus Parker (after 2018’s Dig Your Grave), finds Mills at the home of the immensely wealthy socialite Viveca Canning. She has been shot dead, and a small but extremely valuable painting by Salvador Dalí has been stolen. Estranged from her adult children and recently widowed, Viveca was deeply involved in the Church of Angels Rising, a “sixty million dollar cathedral and an equally rich TV ministry.” Might the church’s founder and head pastor, Gleason Norwood, know why she was killed? Mills calls on Parker to get his impressions of the crime scene. “That painting is the key. To the murder and so much more. We have to find it,” the psychic says. The tension rises as a whole raft of people, including Viveca’s children and her vengeful sister-in-law, go looking for the missing Dalí and the secret it hides. A quick pace and evocative descriptions of the Arizona landscape complement the intricate plot. [em]Agent: Anne Collette, Rees Literary Agency. (Sept.) [/em]