Frankie MacFarlane, Geologist

Finalist, Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Award, Adult Fiction ForeWord Book of the Year Award, Honorable Mention After the murderous rigors of her Ph.D. field research, Frankie MacFarlane is happy to be settling down in her native Tucson, house-sitting the family home and teaching geology at Foothills Community College. Little does she imagine that a brief fishing trip to Mexico with her brother Jamie and his girlfriend, Carla, could entangle her in a string of murder, mythology, and international intrigue. Nonetheless, Frankie responds in true form. Noticing every nuance of her surroundings, both natural and manmade, Frankie skids through a heart-stopping and unforgettable chase from the Sea of Cortez to Tucson's Sabino Canyon.

Southeastern Arizona is a tinderbox. Down Under Copper's plans to explore for minerals pit landowners, worried about their water supply and land values, against those hoping to profit from the mining venture. Someone snaps. In the traditional homeland of the Chiricahua Apaches, an environmental lawyer's body lies in the burned wreckage of his trailer. As if in retaliation, a DUC executive is shot. Geologist Frankie MacFarlane, her students, and Joaquin Black, an old friend and local rancher, find the executive's body in a clearing among the volcanic hoodoos of Chiricahua National Monument. And that night, near Paradise, on the eastern side of the mountain range, someone kills an ethnobotanist-a walker and puzzle maker who hasn't spoken in years. When Frankie, Joaquin, and Joaquin's brother Raul become suspects in the murders, Frankie must decipher interlocking puzzles to clear their names and to find the killer-or killers-before they strike again. In the process, she discovers that, contrary to geologic principles, the past is the key to the present. Miller weaves together geoscience, Western history and culture, ecology, family, and place into a compelling puzzle mystery narrated in Frankie MacFarlane's unique voice.

Geologist Frankie MacFarlane and P.I. Philo Dain, just back from Afghanistan, are packing for an R&R trip to a cooler clime when Philo's Aunt Heather is murdered in her empty Tucson mansion. Her husband, wealthy developer Derek Dain, is the prime suspect. The day before, Heather had left town with the Dain coin collection, worth millions. Now it's missing. Though Philo and his uncle haven't spoken in years, Philo and Frankie agree to backtrack Heather on a quest that takes them from the sun-baked Tucson Basin to the foggy San Francisco Peninsula. Among California's fault-scarred hills they uncover painful secrets from Philo's past-and clues to a mysterious chess set worthy of kings, long protected by one family and long coveted by another. A treasure worth killing for-but who will survive to claim it?

When colleague Dora Simpson asks Frankie MacFarlane to fill in as geology professor on a whitewater trip through the heart of the Grand Canyon, Frankie jumps at the chance. Eight days. Nearly two hundred miles on the river. One mile deep into the earth. What could go wrong? Everything. Frankie wrenches her knee on the first day. On the second, a solo kayaker forces her to choose between being gutted by a Bowie knife and drowning in the frigid water. Frankie chooses the river. Who wants Frankie dead? And why? As Frankie searches for answers, she discovers that one of her students is traveling incognito, fleeing a forced marriage. Has the Family tracked Molly into the Canyon? How can she escape when the few exit routes will be watched? The threads come together at Phantom Ranch, the only place in the Canyon where bridges link trails descending to the river from the North and South Rims. But will ecoterrorist wannabees bring down the bridges before anyone can escape? With the riveting suspense and acute attention to geological detail that readers have come to love, Frankie faces the Colorado River rapids and the perilous mystery at hand with courage, skill, and ingenuity.