Customer Reviews

Dream Stalker

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The attraction that Father John O'Malley and Arapaho attorney Vicky Holden feel for each other deepens in this third book of the series. Father John receives an anonymous phone call late at night, requesting a meeting with him. When he goes to the meeting place, he finds an unidentified body whom he is sure is the caller. Meanwhile Vicky is working to oppose a transaction which would allow a ranch to be turned over to a company which will use it for a nuclear storage site. More people die, and Father John is afraid that Vicky will be next. There are abductions, car chases, and other scarey moments while the Jesuit priest and the Arapaho attorney pursue the murderer. There are also the usual glimpses into the Arapaho culture which always enrich Margaret Coel's books. This is another good entry to this series.

I have bought Ms. Coel's other mysteries partly because her protagonists and mysteries are interesting, and partly because they are set in my home state. In this particular story, however, science was murdered in addition to a drunken cowboy, a tribal chairman, and odd assorted other unfortunates. Irritating careless errors certainly decreased my enjoyment of the book and detracted from the storyline. For instance, Ms. Coel has lightning flashes that follow closely after claps of thunder, "underground lakes" that are filled up with water pumped into oil wells to increase production, and "one to the minus six" being "much less" than "one in ten million"...(one to the minus six equals one). I found myself hunting for the next mistake instead of enjoying the mystery. Better luck next time, I hope.

I enjoyed the first two novels in this series, but not this one. Her attorney protagonist became a shrill, irrational, self righteous zealot with no facts to support her breathless polemics. (All it would take is an unspecified "natural disaster" and then The Terrible Thing would happen!). The contrived "factual" rationalization for her position was as predictible as it was silly. This is a novel long on overly emotional protagonists drenched in self absorbed angst and prolix, confession prone bad guys, but short on rational plot development. It makes one long for Laconic Joe Leaphorn from Hillerman's novels. If you like the manufactured emotional trapeze of a soap opera, you will like this book.

Arapaho lawyer Vicky Holden plays the Lone Ranger as she opposes the
construction of a nuclear waste storage silo on the Legeau Ranch near the
Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. Most of her tribe see the silo as an
opportunity for jobs, but Vicky worries that the site will harm her people.

Her vocal opposition has stirred up the enmity of her opponents. One
of them wants to quiet Vicky and all other opposition to the construction
by using any means at his/her disposal. One opponent to the site is killed
and Vicky nearly becomes a victim also. She turns to her one known ally,
Father John O'Malley. Working as a team, the intrepid amateur sleuths
begin to investigate why someone wants any opponents to the silo silenced.
As they dig deeper, the pair becomes aware of their own attraction to each
other. Still, they must solve the case if they plan to survive the silo
construction.

Margaret Coel is rightfully being acknowledged as the female Tony
Hillerman. The lead protagonists are wonderful characters and the story
line is a very interesting blend of a modern problem (nuclear waste) and
Native American folk lore. More novels like THE DREAM STALKER and readers
will soon be calling Tony Hillerman the male Margaret Coel.

Harriet Klausner