Death Where the Bad Rocks Live

by C. M. Wendelboe

Overview

FBI agent Manny Tanno thought he had left his tribe and the Pine Ridge Reservation behind him years ago. But now with a cold case unearthed in the hot plains sun, he knows that the past never really goes away.

In Badlands National Park, there is a desolate area the Lakota refer to as the Stronghold. General Custer called it hell on earth. During World War II, the Army Air Corps used it as a bombing range. At the end of the war, many unexploded ordnances were swallowed up in its sweltering sands. But that’s not all that’s buried there…

Sixty-five years after the war, the Sioux tribe has contracted an ordnance removal company to defuse any remaining ammunition in the Stronghold. When the company finds a human arm near a live bomb, Tanno and the Tribal police are called to investigate. As the body is exhumed, two more are discovered. The remains are close together, but the murders were decades apart—and the story behind them is about to blow up…  

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101581452
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/04/2012
Series:	Spirit Road Mystery Series , #2
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	NOOK Book
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	65,592
File size:	970 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

C. M. Wendelboe is a sheriff’s deputy in Wyoming. He began his law enforcement career shortly after his discharge from the Marines. In the 1970s he worked in South Dakota towns bordering three Indian reservations, including Pine Ridge.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Praise for Death Along the Spirit Road

“Wendelboe has introduced a powerful new character to Western crime fiction.” —Craig Johnson

“Grabs you by the lapels and refuses to let go…Storytelling at its best.” —Margaret Coel

“Absorbing.”—Publishers Weekly

Editorial Reviews

Wendelboe’s serviceable follow-up to his first mystery set in the South Dakota Badlands, 2011’s Death Along the Spirit Road, has FBI agent Manny Tanno reassessing his Native American heritage after being assigned to the Pine Ridge Reservation. The recent discovery of human remains in a remote and inhospitable area of Pine Ridge used as a bombing range during WWII reveals murders took place there many years apart. New deaths—and an attempt on Manny’s own life—show that something in the maze of scorched rocks must be worth killing for. Manny must cope with flaky or obstructive members of the Oglala Sioux Tribal Police, the mistrust of local residents, and his own uneasy ruminations about what the spirit of the law demands. Wendelboe’s own experience as a western lawman helps make the dogged police work convincing despite fuzzy plotting and stolid prose. Agent: Bill Contardi, Brandt & Hochman Literary. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for Death Along the Spirit Road

“Wendelboe has introduced a powerful new character to Western crime fiction.” —Craig Johnson

“Grabs you by the lapels and refuses to let go…Storytelling at its best.” —Margaret Coel

“Absorbing.”—Publishers Weekly  

From the Publisher

An FBI agent's cold case gets hotter by the day. Manny Tanno thought he'd left his early years on the Pine Ridge Reservation far behind, but his presumed failure to solve a case (Death Along the Spirit Road, 2011) gets him reassigned from D.C. back to Pine Ridge. When three bodies are found in a bombed-out old Buick in the Stronghold area of Badlands National Park, Manny's investigation reminds him that the past won't stay buried. One of the bodies is identified as that of a mining engineer. Another is that of Oglala holy man and famous artist, Moses Ten Bears. A more recent body from the 1960s is that of a college student whose roommate at the time was Alexander "Ham" High Elk, who's been nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court. High Elk is the grandson of Senator Clayton Charles, who's remained Moses Ten Bears' close friend even though Clayton never married the Native American woman who bore his child. Not only is the case politically sensitive and hard to solve, but Manny ignores his diabetes while struggling to resurrect his love life and help a young tribal police officer who's being sexually harassed by the niece of the police chief. Despite trying to forget it, Manny has a strong connection with his past that will help him solve the case if he can escape death at the hands of a determined killer. An exciting and quirky mystery that seamlessly shifts between past and present, offering a number of finely delineated characters and a strong sense of life on the reservation and the beauties of a hostile land.

Kirkus Reviews

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