A Rant of Ravens, Christine Goff, Berkley Prime Crime, $5.99
(out of print, check for used copies at our
ABE store).
This is the first book in Christine Goff's birdwatching series -which is not as confining a concept as it may sound.
Goff manages to provide a very interesting set up for her heroine, Rachel Stanhope, who, in the middle of a divorce, gets
a call from a favorite aunt. Her aunt, Miriam, owns a bird sanctuary in a remote area of Colorado - a set up that couldn't
be further from Rachel's fast paced life as a creative designer for a large graphic design/advertising firm in Manhattan
- and she wants Rachel to "babysit" the sanctuary while she goes on a Middle East birding tour. Thanks to the miracle
of computers, Rachel is easily able to shift things around so that she can telecommute, and the sanctuary seems like a
soothing place to spend her summer, getting over the end of her marriage. Of course, in mysteries, as in real life,
the best laid plans often go awry, and it's not long before Rachel is involved in a kidnapping and a murder.
Rachel arrives at her aunt's house only to find it deserted and the only occupant a dive-bombing parakeet who turns out to have a penchant for Rachel's hair. When Rachel goes out to look for her aunt she overhears a heated argument her aunt is having in the barn with a reporter from a birding magazine, who is writing some kind of expose about Rachel's dead uncle and Miriam's dead husband. Rachel, fond of her uncle and not knowing much about birding, is instantly on her aunt's side of things. When the reporter turns up dead in the middle of a birding expedition, things kick into overdrive. When Miriam disappears the next day with three rare and valuable falcons, both Rachel and the local birding group are galvanized into action, and this of course gives Goff a nice pool of varied and interesting suspects.
Goff manages to infuse a remote location with a lot of interest and room for speculation - there's even a fancy Hunting Lodge near Miriam's property where Rachel goes for dinner one night (on a spying expedition) and manages to eat dinner next to a Sheik and get into a complex discussion of Falconry - since Rachel is accompanied by her birding group, the discussion has two very different points of view. Goff is also able to use the nature that surrounds Rachel as a believable plot element - there's an excellent scene where Rachel is stuck on the side of a mountain (though any regular mystery reader could have told her to stay on the ground), and another where Rachel is careening down a mountainside in her car. This is a well told, fast paced story with a very good main character. I'll be interested to see if future books take Rachel back to Manhattan, or leave her in the wilds of Colorado, where the birds are more plentiful.
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