Ask a Bookseller: A mystery without the procedure in 'Picnic in the Ruins'
Dana Welshans of Snowbound Books in Marquette, Mich., found herself surprised and delighted by the thriller 鈥淧icnic in the Ruins鈥� by Todd Robert Petersen.
She called聽聽a "mystery for readers looking for something outside your usual police detective procedural," set in the otherworldly geography of the Monument lands of the Utah-Arizona border.
At first, the book appears to be a small-town mystery. A famous collector of Native American artifacts is killed. A local sheriff sets out to investigate. But then, Welshans says, the story evolves into something that is part mystery, part thriller and part rumination of history and heritage 鈥� and what that means for the future of our public lands.
The Michigan bookstore has a Minnesota connection: They fulfill the Girls Empowerment Collections for St. Paul鈥揵ased charity聽.