by Ben Boulden
Mystery
writer and journalist Betty Webb made a literary splash when her second Lena
Jones detective novel, Desert Wives, was published by Poisoned Pen Press
in 2002. The likable Lena – an orphan and socially-conscious private eye
working the upscale Phoenix, Arizona suburb of Scottsdale – finds more than
murder while undercover in the fictional polygamist town of Purity on the
Utah-Arizona border. This swath of arid desert is called the Arizona Strip and
home to more sheep than people, and more religious sects practicing polygyny –
a form of polygamy where one man marries multiple women – than anywhere else in
the United States. Including the infamous Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-day Saints (FLDS), headquartered in Colorado City, Arizona, and its
outlaw “prophet” Warren Jeffs. Publishers Weekly called Desert Wives,
“a searing exposé of the abuses of contemporary polygamy,” and then added,
“[it] could do for polygamy what [Stowe’s] Uncle Tom’s Cabin did for slavery.”
Marilyn
Stasio, The New York Times’ well-respected mystery critic, wrote:
“If Betty Webb had gone undercover and written Desert Wives as a piece of investigative journalism, she’d probably be up for a Pulitzer.”
[For the
rest of the article click here to go to Dark City Underground...]
