Sydney Graves introduces Jo Bailen, a hardboiled PI based in Tucson in the first in a proposed series, The Arizona Triangle. Jo is a queer woman, almost forty, who works for an all female detective agency, and lands in the middle of a case involving her own past.
Jo’s just wrapping up a cheating spouse case when her boss sends her Delphi, an hour north. Their new client, Laura Gold, requested Jo. Laura is the mother of Jo’s childhood best friend, Rose Delaney. Rose and Jo have been estranged since they were fourteen, but now that Rose has been missing for two days, Laura only trusts Jo to find her missing daughter. When Jo follows her instincts, and follows the police, she does find Rose, hanging from a tree. And, she finds another childhood friend, Tyler Bridgewater, now a police officer, vomiting at the site of Rose’s death.
Rose’s mother wants answers. Did her daughter commit suicide? It’s a complex story that digs deep into the stories Rose and Jo told themselves about their estrangement, and their link to Tyler. It’s an ugly story of emotional entanglements and sexual trauma.
While I plowed through the story, it was the descriptions of Arizona’s landscapes that kept me going. It’s a difficult story to read, but the landscapes add the only beauty to the book.
Sydney Graves is a pseudonym for Kate Christensen, an Arizona native and the author of eight novels.
The Arizona Triangle by Sydney Graves. Harper Paperbacks, 2024. ISBN 9780063379992 (paperback), 304p.
FTC Full Disclosure – I received a galley through NetGalley to review for a journal.
