November 16, 2020
Petersen (It Needs to Look Like We Tried) serves up a rollicking mystery full of heroes, mystics, petty criminals, and evil capitalists on the border of Utah and Arizona. After the shadowy Kristine Frangos hires the local Ashdown brothers to steal some maps of ancient sites from amateur collector Bruce Cluff, Bruce and one of the maps go missing. Meanwhile, anthropologist Sophia Shepard and park ranger Paul Thrift are exploring ancient Pauite sites—Sophia for research, Paul for an ulterior motive involving a pilfered artifact. Thrown together with a German tourist on a mystical hero’s quest, and helped by a reclusive savant called Dreamweaver, Sophia and Paul must outsmart an assassin hired by Frangos—who wants to pillage the sacred desert for minerals and more—to clean up the mess made by the Ashdowns. While a few too many coincidences pile on in the last pages, Peterson keeps up plenty of action and suspense while also offering philosophical insights on who owns the land. Petersen’s offbeat adventure keeps the reader turning the pages.
Starred review from November 1, 2020
Petersen's tightly written mystery plays out over the vast, unforgiving terrain on the Utah-Arizona border with a lineup of unforgettable characters. While studying the ethics of preserving ancient artifacts, doctoral student Sophia Shepard crosses paths with self-taught collector Bruce Cluff. He regrets removing so many relics over the years and starts working from his hand-drawn maps and detailed notebook to return the ancient objects to their original sacred locations. The hapless Ashdown brothers, Lonnie and Byron, are hired by an energy company CEO looking for oil lease opportunities on national monument land to steal Cluff's maps and storehouse of rare Native American pots, stone tools, and weapons. But their clumsy efforts turn deadly, and the trail of destruction they wreak across federal lands with the CEO's fixer, Scissors, draws the attention of the local sheriff and the FBI. Add to the mix a German tourist who has left the Ranches, Relics, and Ruins tour on a quest for the "real" American West and an unethical journalist who repeatedly gums up the works, and the result is a frantic race to obtain the relics for good or bad. VERDICT Award winner Petersen (It Needs To Look Like We Tried; Long After Dark) delivers a fast-paced chase over a hostile landscape while underscoring the past and present threats to Native American antiquities. Hang on tight and enjoy the ride.--Donna Bettencourt, Mesa Cty. P.L., Grand Junction, CO
Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
November 15, 2020
The fourth novel by Petersen is part mystery; part quirky, darkly funny, mayhem-filled thriller; and part meditation on what it means to "own" land, artifacts, and the narrative of history in the West. Sophia Shepard is a Princeton anthropology Ph.D. student whose outspokenness has resulted in a kind of exile to remote southern Utah, where she's giving talks to busloads of visitors and studying tourist impacts on Native American sites. In Kanab she crosses paths with the Ashdowns, two sinister brothers, criminals who've botched a burglary, hastily half-covered the mess they made, and absconded with one of the artifact maps they were supposed to deliver. Soon a ruthless fixer--he's an ex-stage magician, the kind of amusing and fanciful touch that elevates this book--is on the Ashdowns' trail, and when Sophia stumbles across the brothers trying to excavate a back-country Paiute site with a stolen backhoe, hell breaks loose. Soon she--along with a roguish Department of the Interior agent she's befriended and a German dermatologist embarked on a hybrid of tourist jaunt and vision quest that has left him lost and disoriented in the desert--is being hunted by the fixer, too. Along the way they, and we, encounter a cybertech pioneer who's now a high-tech hermit; a famed video game deviser; a recently divorced small-town sheriff; a widow suffering the beginnings of dementia; and more. Petersen keeps piling on plot twists, eccentric characters, and well-described settings, and beneath the plot's pandemonium there's an intriguing meditation on "authenticity," on "ownership," and on the legacy of violence in the remote West. A fast-paced, highly entertaining hybrid of Tony Hillerman and Edward Abbey.
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December 1, 2020
Blending dark comedy and crime fiction, Petersen examines a moment in time that exquisitely reveals timeless and far-reaching themes. Anthropologist Sophia Shepard spends a summer at the border between Utah and Arizona, researching the impact of tourism on the sacred sites of the region's Indigenous peoples. While there, she interacts with locals, tourists, and police, and learns of the mysterious death of a dentist who is also a caretaker of maps and artifacts. Criminal schemes surrounding his death expose motifs of preservation, decay and restoration, provenance and authenticity, and heritage stolen and displaced. Trapped between her own moral code and the shadowy motivations of desert outlaws, Sophia receives an unexpected invitation from an egomaniacal adversary determined to auction off cherished fragments of great antiquity. Throughout the novel's adrenaline-filled external conflicts, Sophia is simultaneously considering deep, universal questions: To whom does this treasure really belong? Who owns this land? And, ultimately, who owns history itself? Picnic in the Ruins is an excellent read for those who enjoy thrillers set in the Southwest and readers interested in the preservation of history and culture.
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