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Overview
Ned Carr is a miner, an irascible old coot who has held on to acres of prime real estate in the middle of Aspen’s ski slopes. Carr feuds with everyone, including the ski company and eco-warriors who want to shut down his mines. Sheriff Kurt Muller is the only person with a soft spot for Carr. Following up a suspicious call, Muller rushes to Carr’s mine—in time to witness the shaft explosion that kills him. Drawn into a dangerous covert war between militant greens and corporate forces grappling for control of the New West, Muller uncovers a conspiracy that could destroy his most cherished loves—the two children under his protection and the snowcapped wilderness he calls home.
Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
Into Thin Air, Zigal's first book about Kurt Muller, was good; his second takes a quantum leap up to terrific. Muller is a complex, believable character, an ex-hippie who, 11 years ago, decided on a lark to run for sheriff of the Colorado county that includes Aspen. His marriage has already fallen apart; now he's wondering if the strain of the job on his six-year-old son, Lennon, is worth it. Another six-year-old boyLennon's friend Hunter Carris at the center of a story that begins when Hunter's grandfather, an old miner named Ned Carr, is blown up in his apparently worthless silver mine. A dedicated troublemaker, Ned has irritated everyone in the area, from the violent environmental activists called the Green Briars to an even more dangerous (and better funded) right-wing group known as the Free West Rebellion. But as gripping as the many action scenes are, what really lifts this novel to excellence is the way Zigal writes about fathers and children, the legacies the former leave the latter and the difficulties of negotiating between loyalty and independence. Throughout this strong, sad, constantly involving story, Zigal renders the deep bond between people and the land with a blend of complexity and conflict that enriches the genre. (Dec.)Kirkus Reviews
Ned Carr is a hardrock stiff, a miner whose prejudices against Aspen skiers and environmentalists are as ancient and unproductive as the silver mine they'd all like to shut down, burying it in ski trails or ruling it off-limits forever. But Ned is even stiffer than the other old-guard miners, since he's just been blown up in one of his beloved mine shafts. Sidelined Pitkin County sheriff Kurt Muller, reentering the lists on behalf of Ned's grandson Hunter, wants to track down the bad guys; to prove, against eyewitness testimony, that they didn't include any of his own staff; and to rescue Hunter from human predators looking to eat his lunch, and maybe his bones. What he finds instead—when he can pin down the interested parties long enough to parley with them—is that Ned's misanthropic partner Tyler Rutledge and Kurt's own old flame Katrina Pfeil are hiding secrets that won't bear the light of day; that Ned had thrown in his lot with the greedy, powerful Free West Legal Coalition, an octopus whose tentacles reach as far as fictionalized versions of Ted Turner, Jane Fonda, and Rev. Sun Myung Moon; and that Free West is as enterprising in protecting his own interests (Ned's murder is only the beginning) as it is untouchable.Not much mystery about whodunit, then, but Muller, a cop with a rare talent for pointed meditation, unearths so many well- planted surprises en route to the final roundup that only the captious would complain. A marked advance over Muller's sprawling, unruly debut (Into Thin Air, 1995), and one of the year's happiest surprises.