Publication Date: October 22, 2024
In the vein of the bestselling California noirs of Sue Grafton and Sara Gran, a whodunnit about loyalty, love, and the legacy of trauma featuring a hardboiled, queer private eye whose latest case takes her deep into her own complicated past.
On the cusp of forty, Justine Bailen, better known as Jo, works for an all-female detective agency based in Tucson, Arizona. While staking out a cheating spouse, she learns that her long-estranged best friend from childhood, Rose, is missing, and that Rose’s mother wants to hire Jo to find her. This case is all kinds of wrong for Jo, but she has no choice but to head back to her hometown, an hour north and a world away from Tucson.
Back in Delphi, she learns that her high school boyfriend, Tyler—who is probably part of the reason her friendship with Rose went south—is the cop assigned to the case. It doesn’t take long for Jo to realize that he’s all mixed up in it, too. To have any hope of learning the truth about Rose’s disappearance, Jo must finally face the demons she thought she’d escaped.
The Arizona Triangle by Sydney Graves plunges readers into the heart of the Southwestern desert, where eerie disappearances and mysteries evoke a blend of supernatural and suspense.
The protagonist, Justine Bailen (Jo), is dragged back to her hometown after discovering that her long-estranged best friend has disappeared. Upon returning to Delphi, Jo reluctantly reunites with her ex-boyfriend and current town cop, Tyler. The deeper she dives into the case, the more alarming and disturbing her discoveries become.
As Jo ventures into this mysterious “triangle,” she encounters a chilling mix of thriller elements with paranormal undertones, challenging readers to decipher what’s real. Graves uses a steady build-up of tension and atmospheric descriptions to evoke the Arizona desert’s raw underbelly.
Graves weaves a gripping story in which everyday landscapes take on an ominous edge. The characters are well-crafted, each harboring their own motivations, strengths, and vulnerabilities, making their journey all the more engaging.
Perfect for readers who enjoy novels like The X-Files and Twilight Zone episodes, this book is an exciting mix of psychological suspense and supernatural storytelling, with enough depth to keep readers turning pages and questioning what’s next.
The Arizona Triangle was well-written, engaging, and disturbing. It started fairly slow and then hit a relatively quick crescendo that will keep readers on the hook. It’s like something you want to look away from but also want to see what happens.
I took away a star for the disturbing and dark events of the book. When things like this are included in a book, I strongly believe authors should include a trigger warning. I have to admit, I was quite taken aback by certain scenes in the book and could have at least known what I was getting into if a trigger warning had been included.
Other than the trigger warning, if you are a fan of dark and twisted mysteries, The Arizona Triangle is definitely for you.
Sydney Graves is a pseudonym for Kate Christensen, an Arizona native and the author of eight novels, most recently Welcome Home, Stranger. Her fourth novel, The Great Man, won the 2008 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. She has also published two food-centric memoirs, Blue Plate Special and How to Cook a Moose, which won the 2016 Maine Literary Award for Memoir. Her essays, reviews, and short pieces have appeared in a wide variety of publications and anthologies. She lives with her husband and their two dogs in Taos, New Mexico.
