Blue Wolf

As Jackson Hole gallery owner Alix Thorssen plans an art auction to promote wolf conservation, she is plunged into a bitter feud between ranchers and environmentalists -- and an old mystery involving the strange death of a teenage boy.A reclusive artist delivers a stunning painting of a blue wolf at the auction, and asks Alix a favor: investigate the accidental shooting of Derek Wylie twenty-five years earlier. Alix finds disturbing clues to a murder and a cover-up, one that leads by...
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As Jackson Hole gallery owner Alix Thorssen plans an art auction to promote wolf conservation, she is plunged into a bitter feud between ranchers and environmentalists -- and an old mystery involving the strange death of a teenage boy.A reclusive artist delivers a stunning painting of a blue wolf at the auction, and asks Alix a favor: investigate the accidental shooting of Derek Wylie twenty-five years earlier. Alix finds disturbing clues to a murder and a cover-up, one that leads by tangled threads to the heated animosity right now in Jackson Hole, as the artist and her painting become the catalyst in a brewing storm of rage, guilt and dark secrets left behind in a trail of old blood.This is the fourth Alix Thorssen mystery, following Nordic Nights, Painted Truth, and The Bluejay Shaman."A few writers are gifted with a feel for place that transforms locale from mere background into a vital element of the story itself, as important as the human characters who inhabit it. Among today's fortunate few are Tony Hillerman with his mystical view of Navajo country and James Lee Burke, whose evocation of the Louisiana bayous verges on the poetic. To their number add Lise McClendon, who has taken the small resort town of Jackson Hole and the Wyoming wilderness that surrounds it, and made her own.Picturesque Jackson Hole, placid on the surface, is not without its controversies and conflicts. When a rancher, claiming self-defense, kills a wolf, the community is divided among those who view the wolf, recently reintroduced into the wild, as a threat to their livestock and those who seek to protect and preserve the greatly endangered species.All Alix Thorssen wants is a long anticipated vacation. Alas, it is not to be. Alix, who owns an art gallery in Jackson Hole, is drawn into the argument when paintings by her client, Queen Johns, are banished from an upcoming art auction because of her pro-wolf stance.In standing up for her client, Alix incurs the ire of the ranchers, which increases when she agrees to help Queen research the death of a teenager 25 years earlier. Homicide is difficult to prove after so many years until Alix realizes that past and present are linked and that justice, although long delayed, is still possible.McClendon weaves a persuasive story, as haunting as the landscape it occupies and blessedly free of manufactured melodrama. In Alix, she gives us a heroine both captivating and credible. And when you add that feel for place mentioned earlier..."-- The San Diego Union-Tribune"Blue Wolf is a mystery that stars an engaging amateur sleuth, but it is also a novel about human frailties and fears that dog a person their whole life. Lise McClendon captures the essences of the human spirit to perfection, which is why her novels are so realistic."-- Midwest Book Review"Thematically, this work is the strongest of the four Alix Thorssen novels, plus the sense of something magical occurring in the area is powerful. Its use of the fall season in Wyoming for a setting is expressive, and the well-developed characters that people this work are also a highlight... Recommended to any traditional mystery reader, especially those who enjoy works set in the contemporary West."-- Mystery News