11 Oct / Not of This Fold [A Linda Wallheim Mystery, Book 4] by Mette Ivie Harrison [in Booklist]
The fourth of Mette Ivie Harrison’s 11 planned books for her Linda Wallheim mystery series takes the outspoken Mormon-bishop’s wife from her comfortable Draper, Utah, home into the Spanish community, a few miles in distance but a world away culturally, ethnically, and socioeconomically.
Linda accompanies her younger friend Gwen, a minor character from The Bishop’s Wife (2014) and His Right Hand (2015), to find out what happened in the murder of a young Mexican mother with three preschool children. Gwen, who has been volunteering at the Spanish ward, where the inequity of how members are treated based on gender, race, and class is fueling her already faltering Mormonism, eschews police protocols, church hierarchies, even common sense to uncover the truth. Gwen’s recklessness outstrips even Linda’s usual overenthusiasm for answers.
Through these two generations of strong-willed women, Harrison often scathingly confronts religious doctrine, immigration injustice, racism, homophobia, marriage inequity, and male power abuses, all while deftly choreographing a multi-tentacled criminal cover-up. While the good bishop again bemoans the dangers of his wife’s sleuthing, Harrison’s readers will continue to applaud Linda’s (thankfully) defiant tenacity.
Review: “Fiction,” Booklist, October 15, 2018
Readers: Adult
Published: 2018