One For The Money,To For The Sluice A Fr. Jake Mystery (volume 2) [Paperback]

Fr. Jake Jakubowski, a 70-year-old Michigan priest temporarily assigned to a New Mexican village, helps Detective Sonia Mora investigate a fetus found in an irrigation sluice, which prompts reopening a cold case about the death of a wealthy rancher's wife. The picketing of a soldier's funeral that turns deadly; a brash anthropologist's excavation for Civil War Apache scout remains; and Mexican folk healing customs to cure a daughter of the debilitating effects of her father's Prolonged Grief Disorder, propel the plot amid a stunning landscape of contemporary New Mexico.

In a sequel to The Ghosts of Glorieta, Fr. Jake Jakubowski, a 70-year-old Michigan priest, is again embroiled in criminal activity at the fictional New Mexico village of Providencia. The discovery of a fetus in an irrigation sluice prompts Detective Sonia Mora to reopen a cold case involving the accidental death of a rancher's wife. His daughter, Dulci, struggles to escape the suffocating effects of her father's Prolonged Grief Disorder and a Mexican folk healer's treatments. A fundamentalist church's picketing of a soldier's funeral twice turns deadly for the priest; a brash anthropologist purports to have found remains of an Apache scout in a Civil War fort's cemetery; and a thwarted helicopter escape plan results in the establishment of a horse sanctuary that helps Dulci recover. Several village residents from Ghosts reappear amid a background of contemporary New Mexican secular and religious customs and locations.

   

There is much to enjoy in this compelling mystery novel: Noyer's New Mexico setting is rich in descriptions, with a central theme of an irrigation sluice (acequia) the life blood of rural residents' livelihoods which is skillfully intertwined with bodies, superstitions and drama. A well drawn plot represents fictional Providencia's laborers, ranch hands, servantsl³q