A TOWN CALLED WHY

In this desert thriller, an Arizona police detective questioning his courage investigates a relative’s death.

Some consider Frank Gaines a hero for his bravery in a hostage situation. But it’s all a front; he feels “afraid half the time” and has been seeing Apache psychotherapist Sunny Kacheenay for a year and a half. He talks in sessions about old and ongoing police cases and dreams as well as about the phone call from the widow of his great-uncle, who’s dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot. Sunny deciphers his great-aunt’s essential message—it’s Gaines’ “sacred duty,” as part Apache, to torture and kill whoever is responsible for the suicide. The detective quickly eyes Jason Flint, Sunny’s landlord, who, for some reason, unnerves Gaines. But as he’s still a cop, Gaines struggles with his choices. Meanwhile, Flint’s malice seems to permeate everyone’s lives and minds, and other locals, from a woman who’s already done a stint for manslaughter to one of Sunny’s patients, soon enter the fray. Lenz aptly fuses a procedural with dreamlike sequences filled with meaning, such as Gaines’ seeing Sunny’s 6-year-old son, who died in a car accident. The many characters involved intersect in intriguing ways, sometimes literally passing one another at Sunny’s office. But what really grounds the story are the players’ intricate roots. Gaines, for example, as half Native American and half White, feels like something of an outcast, and even his dog, a rescue, is a rare (and illegal) coydog. The author offers evocative details about the arid but beautiful desert landscape, which features a “scarred tract of rocks and sagebrush, beyond an immense field of cactus, maturing lavishly in the remains of a many-years-ago flash flood, and stretching for miles all the way to the cliffs.” The final act accelerates in intensity, though Lenz tempers much of the violence throughout.

Spirited, interwoven characters enrich this sharply written mystery.