Reviewer: Amy Lignor
Title: The Salt Maiden
Author: Colleen Thompson
Publisher: Leisure Books/Dorchester Publishing
ISBN-13: 978-0-8439-6017-4
Release Date: November 2007
Genre/Sub-genre: Romantic Suspense
Year/Setting: Present Day - Devil’s Claw, TX
Overall Rating: 2.0
Sexual Content Rating: Subtle
Language (Profanity/Slang) Content Rating: None/Mild
Violent Content Rating: Mild
Colleen's Website:
www.colleenthompson.com
Deep beneath the desert floor lies a woman…mummified by salt. With her rests a secret that someone will kill to keep buried.
This is the tag line of this suspenseful novel by Colleen Thompson. Dana Vanover, who has enough problems in her own life, especially with her mother who is just a handful of idiosyncrasies, is uprooted. She is sent on a mission to find her sister. A sister she has constantly had to take care of and worry about all her life.
Angie, Dana’s sister, has disappeared in the small, wasteland town of Devil’s Claw, Texas. I want to interject here that the writer was so skilled at bringing this wasteland to life that you can actually feel the salt and hot sand clogging your throat as you journey through the eerie town.
In order to find her sister, Dana has to get through a legion of rednecks that are a cross between serial killers and cowboys, huge snakes rattling around the floorboards of her car, and most of all, Sheriff Jay Eversole. He is the lone lawman in this godforsaken country and she has to work with him to search every inch of Rimrock County.
Did Angie disappear because of the secrets of the inhabitants of the Broken Spur Café? Or did the small town’s dirty politics take her out?
There are so many vibrant characters – some completely frightening – in this book, that they carry the whole novel even when the storyline slows down. Jay Eversole is the one you’ll really feel for. A man fighting to maintain his place in a very small world but also remain loyal to his oath of service, while struggling with his newfound emotions for Dana.
The barren landscape is a character all its own. I wouldn’t put it on the same pedestal as a Tami Hoag or a Tess Garritsen, but Colleen Thompson portrayed the strange scenery so well, that the town could have sprung straight from a Stephen King short story.
Amy
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