Sinister Graves

May 1, 2022

Lord Bertram Deeley drops dead on a cruise he's organized to his luxurious Luxor home, and guest Lady Emily (an Alexander stalwart) has a horde of suspects--and a link to a millennia-old crime--as she uncovers the Secrets of the Nile (40,000-copy first printing). Delightfully fowl-mouthed best seller Andrews sends readers Dashing Through the Snowbirds as Meg Langslow hosts a group of Canadians forced by a nasty boss to work far from home over Christmas, then investigates when the boss is murdered (40,000-copy first printing). Green takes the reins from the late, formidable Beaton in Devil's Delight, with Agatha Raisin and colleague Toni encountering a young man who claims hysterically that he has stumbled upon a dead body near the Mircester Naturist Club, though no body can be found (75,000-copy first printing). In Haines's Bones of Holly, effervescent private eye Sarah Booth Delaney and colleague Tinkie head to Bay St. Louis, MS, to judge the annual library tree-decorating contest with two rivalrous authors, one of whom soon disappears (40,000-copy first printing). In the New York Times best-selling McKinlay's The Plot and the Pendulum, library director Lindsey Norris unearths a skeleton at the Dorchester family estate, where she is cataloging a huge bequest to the library. In Rosenfelt's latest, Santa's Little Yelpers--a litter of puppies at lawyer Andy Carpenter's dog-rescuing Tara Foundation--are being fostered by volunteer Scott Tillman, formerly imprisoned, who's discovered evidence that would exonerate him of the crime he insists he didn't commit (50,000-copy first printing). From Pinckley Prize-winning Rendon, an enrolled member of the White Earth Nation, Sinister Graves brings back young Ojibwe woman Cash Blackbear, who helps her sheriff guardian investigate when the body of an unidentified Indigenous woman is swept into town by ferocious floodwaters.

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 25, 2022
Set sometime in the 1970s, Rendon’s strong third Cash Blackbear mystery (after 2019’s Girl Gone Missing) finds 19-year-old college student Cash, an Ojibwe who was separated from her family when she was three, continuing to serve as the unofficial assistant of Wheaton, the sheriff of Minnesota’s Norman County, who rescued her from the foster care system. When flood waters on the Red River float the body of an unidentified Native American woman into Ada, Minn., the coroner determines that she was smothered to death. The coroner shows Wheaton and Cash an item he found on the body: a torn page from a hymnal with words in both English and Ojibwe. Cash later learns of the victim’s possible connection to another dead woman, who attended an unusual fundamentalist church run by the charismatic Pastor John Steene. Despite being warned to stay away from Steene, Cash seeks him out, determined to get to the truth. Rendon deepens the complex character of her eccentric Native American lead, who believes she can read minds and has revelatory out-of-body experiences. Lisbeth Salander fans will be eager to see more of Cash. Agent: Jacqui Lipton, Raven Quill Literary.

August 1, 2022
The discovery of a nameless corpse gives Ojibwe college student Renee "Cash" Blackbear another excuse to slack off from her studies. Norman County Sheriff Dave Wheaton may have rescued Cash from the car crash that claimed her mother's life and taken her under his wing years ago, but that doesn't mean she has to like every one of his ideas for her life. When North Dakota's spring floods lead to the discovery on Little Lake of a pregnant woman who's been bashed and smothered to death, it's a godsend for Cash, because Wheaton once again calls on her for unofficial aid. Soon after the victim is identified as Edie Birch, a second body is washed up by the floodwaters: that of Lori White Eagle, from Devils Lake. Cash, who sees portents and feels emotional vibrations that pass other people by, is convinced that the two women can be traced to the church led by Pastor John Steene, whose wife, Lillian, is the organist. The Steenes are more than receptive to her appearance at the church, inviting her for meals and urging her to return. But her questions about the two child-sized graves on the church grounds are met with a stony silence that convinces her their cordial hospitality is only one aspect of their relationship with local young women. Rendon's clipped style perfectly complements the laconic dialogue of Cash and her cavalier indifference to her schoolwork, her friends, her neighbors, and virtually everything else except for those two graves. Not much mystery but lots of menace in this hyperunderstated character piece.

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August 1, 2022
This third Renee ""Cash"" Blackbear novel (following Girl Gone Missing, 2019), set along the Red River bordering Minnesota and North Dakota, could be the one to garner Rendon the larger audience she deserves. Like Rendon, Cash is a member of the White Earth Anishinabe Nation. A 19-year-old college student at Moorhead State College, Cash also helps out the local sheriff, her mentor, Dave Wheaton, who recognizes Cash's psychic ability to sense what people around her are thinking. Those skills prove particularly valuable here, after the body of an unidentified Native woman is discovered in the river's flood waters. With Weaton out of town, Cash attempts to identify the woman. The trail leads to the reservation where Cash formerly lived and to a cultish church and its charismatic yet sinister minister. Cash finds herself torn between her student life, her bar hopping and pool playing, and her determination to find out what's really happening with the minister, his unstable wife, and the ""sinister graves"" behind the church. Rendon mixes vivid details of reservation life with a nuanced portrait of a compelling lead character who is a beguiling mix of vulnerability and bravado.

COPYRIGHT(2022) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

September 1, 2022

In the 1970s, near the Minnesota-North Dakota border, the spring thaws flood the area. Sheriff Wheaton asks Cash Blackbear to help him identify a corpse when a young woman's body floats into town. Wheaton suspects the deceased is from the White Earth Reservation, and Cash, an Ojibwe college student, is more likely to find answers than Wheaton is. When another body is discovered, Cash makes a connection to a small rural church where some of the Native women have been attracted to the handsome minister. She's disturbed, though, by the graves of infants in the nearby cemetery, and the black shadow of a Jiibay, a ghost seen around death. With the help of an older woman who recognizes Cash's gift--her ability to know things through her dreams--Cash confronts evil in a rural, isolated area where she has no backup, and people stay out of others' business. VERDICT There's a bleak tone in this emotionally intense follow-up to Girl Gone Missing. Rendon, an enrolled member of White Earth Nation, skillfully handles sobering social issues of stolen children and isolated young adults who feel loss. Recommend to readers of David Heska Wanbli Weiden's award-winning Winter Counts.--Lesa Holstine

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.