- miko || 巫女 -

NightZone is another solid Posadas County mystery novel - somewhere around #19 in the series, which first published in 1991. Set in New Mexico, this book is from Ex-Sheriff Bill Gastner's POV (notable because the series moved to Undersheriff Estelle Reyes' POV for a number of books) working with the Sheriff's department on a suspicious death.

I've really enjoyed almost every moment of this series, so it's a clear recommendation if rural police novels are of interest to you. Hard to say much in the case of murder mystery books, but this particular one did stand out as not being too contrived a death (sometimes they do get rather complicated) and having a very neat radio telescope project as the backdrop. This is pleasantly possible, as you may be familiar with the Very Large Array in New Mexico (aka the giant satellite dish from Contact).

As usual, the books feel utterly comfortable and consistent in terms of locales and characters being true to themselves and how they've changed over the years of this series. Until I wrote the summary above, it didn't even occur to me that it's weird how the main character is retired but heavily involved - the story just flowed well around that and I know the character and how that makes sense.

This was actually the first Gastner book that I enjoyed as much or more than the Estelle books (which I started with). For local folks: the library has most if not all of the Estelle books (first is Scavengers), but gaps in the Gastner ones since they're older. Skipping books doesn't greatly affect you, though I'd recommend trying to stay in order as much as possible.