Product Description
While scouting locations for a film documentary on the Arizona's Apache Wars, private investigator Lena Jones and Oscar-winning director Warren Quinn, discover the mutilated body of a young girl. The gruesome manner of the child's death evokes memories of Lena’s own rough childhood. Clashing with the local law, Lena's investigation uncovers a small town with a big secret. Los Perdidos is not the Eden it first appears. Founded by the descendants of pioneers who fought Geronimo, the townspeople have now armed themselves against the hordes of illegal immigrants streaming across the Arizona/Mexico border. A significant population of documented foreign-born residents also lives and works in Los Perdedos at a modern plant. Lena senses a sinister force at work in the town—but where? Then two more girls disappear from Los Perdidos, and as the death toll mounts, Lena is tempted to implement some frontier justice of her own. When she finally unmasks the killer, she discovers a chain of horrific crimes responsible for subjugating millions of girls and women around the globe. In Desert Cut, the still vivid memory of Geronimo's war mixes with the modern immigration war, the hard life on the Arizona/Mexico border contrasts with Hollywood's slick production meetings, and the cruelty of an ancient practice is tempered by a growing underground railroad fighting to save its young victims.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 8 reviews)

WAY too much research

Where to begin? First of all, the writing if very passive. Many, (too many) sentences start with gerunds or "as". Passive. Yes, she did a LOT of research - too much. It gets in the way of the story. I have relatives who live in Scottsdale, and elsewhere in Arizona. NONE of them is all that interested in Indian history. Most people aren't and a little history would go a long way. Okay, Lena (LENA? what is she 300?) is not a appealing character - I didn't like her one bit. Just because she finds the body of a little girl in the desert, she feels that she and she alone can solve the mystery! Obviously she believes she's MUCH smarter than the local law. Her lover begs her to stop and go home - NOOOOO she has to do this! No wonder the man gets pissed at her.

She proceeds to try and solve the mystery, in spite of the fact that the Sheriffs tells her to GO HOME, repeatedly. NNOOOOO, she won't. Yes, yes, we got it that she was shot in the head by her mother. Hard to miss when she mentioned it on about every page! So, what, means she HAS to solve EVERY crime involving a child? PLEEZE. Lena (yuck I hate that name) stated in the beginning of the book that she gets most of her money being a consultant for a Hollywood crime show. Okay, when they call needing her - she says she can't go! Why? She's on a case! No, she isn't. No one is paying her - she's poking around on her own.

Also in the beginning she says she was shot in the hip and the doctor has told her not to exercise too much. Good old stubborn Lena (gawk) goes on a run and limps home because of the pain, yet later in the book when she's searching for another missing girl - she walks around ALL NIGHT LONG with no apparent pain.

I only got to page 90 and gave up, I was so disgusted. I won't even start on all the liberal boloney filling these pages. If you want to read a good modern western with a strong female protagonist - pick up one of J.A. Jance's books. She's a good writer.
September 17, 2008

Outstanding contribution to Webb's Desert series

All the books in Betty Webb's Desert series featuring PI Lena Jones have been very good. They are tied together by the mystery of Jones' background and her developing personal relationships, while each has an individual theme in the mystery Jones is focused on solving.

This one has a theme that is not for the squeamish. That does not make it less important as a social issue.

If the series has any drawback, it would lie in the often thinly veiled hostility towards government-employed law enforcement personnel.
May 13, 2008

A Must Read

I just finished Dessert Cut by Betty Webb it's her fifth Lena Jones Mystery - Lena is a Scottsdale Az. PI who has survived a gunshot to the head when she was a small girl and raised in the "system". This foray involved female genitalia mutilation, which used to be common in the Middle East (which I didn't know), and her fight to solve a little girls murder. If you haven't read her it will be worth your while to do so, she takes on a lot of today's socially conscious issues.
April 22, 2008

The Desert's Terrible Truths

"I'm not a nice girl," Lena Jones declares on the first page of the first book (Desert Wives) in this outstanding mystery series by Betty Webb, built around controversial darkside themes. By the time Desert Cut, Lena's fifth dilemma comes along, she still isn't. And it's a good thing.

Lena is a been-there woman. She needs all the experience she has as an ex-cop and now Scottsdale PI. One perfect morning she and her colleague/companion Warren Quinn are enjoying a pleasant ride across the Arizona desert when they make a stunning and horrifying discovery--the body of a girl-child. Is she the victim of an illegal border crossing gone wrong, or more, or worse?

Once again former investigative reporter Betty Webb shows her skills in spinning a fascinating story around a tough topic.

Webb is a fine place-writer. Her descriptions of the desert landscape and the people shaped by it alone recommend the book. But the culture is changing. There are more than the relationships between the Native American, the Anglos and the Hispanics. There is yet another wave of newcomers as burgeoning job opportunities attract workers from halfway around the world.

Herein lays the conflict. For the lovely child, the dead girl, was not abandoned after an accidental death, but is the victim of a brutal and unspeakable crime. So unspeakable that local sheriff refuses to give Lena the cause of death--for a time. Lena is persistent not only in gaining that knowledge but in pursuing the truth until all is understood. In the process, Lena learns more about herself and discovers more about her own tangled background.

The book is not all heavy going. There are flashes of the glitzy world of Beverly Hills when Lena flies over to her consulting job on a television Western, and as we learn of Warren's day job as an Oscar-winning Hollywood director. Plenty of humor sparks out as well.

Still, Webb reveals, as is sometimes best done in fiction, some eye-opening facts about this nameless crime. And she names it--female genital mutilation or amputation. Terrifying yes, but something every person needs to know of and understand in our changing culture.

Webb ends the book with two appendices (one with explicit language) and a bibliography on the subject. She's serious about this.

I recommend this book, both for the quality of the story and for the essential and painful information, but the reader should not pick it up unaware.

by Patricia Nordyke Pando
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women
April 02, 2008

A Grim Tale

Scottsdale PI Lena Jones, in four previous appearances, has tackled some different and interesting and controversial topics, ranging from polygamy, the homeless and a former WWII German POW camp. In this latest novel, she uncovers horrific subject one knows about in Africa and the Middle East, but hardly comes to mind in the United States.

While horseback riding with her boyfriend scouting a film location in the Arizona desert, Lena finds the body of a seven-year-old girl. It turns out there are other young girls either missing or dead from a nearby town. Many of the inhabitants work for a chemical factory there, and are African or Middle Eastern immigrants. Lena can't get the thought of the little girl she found in a shallow grave from her mind, and starts her own investigation. Eventually, she ties together a common thread for all the dead and missing young girls, and a horrific one it is.

As in the previous books in the series, the plot is meticulously researched, with an outstanding bibliography, carefully written and documented, and the writing and story substantial. While constructed as a mystery, the novel is truly more important than the genre.

Highly recommended.

April 01, 2008

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