The HBS Author's Spotlight SHOWCASES Betty Webb's New Book: The Puffin of Death.
Author Betty Webb is a bestselling author of the Desert Wind, Desert Wives, etc. & the Gunn Zoo mysteries.
The Puffin of Death
Gunn Zoo Series Book 4
Author: Betty Webb
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California zookeeper Theodora Bentley travels to Iceland to pick up an orphaned polar bear cub destined for the Gunn Zoo’s newly installed Northern Climes exhibit. The trip is intended to be a combination of work and play.
But on day two, while horseback riding near a picturesque seaside village, Teddy discovers a man lying atop a puffin burrow, shot through the head. The victim is identified as American bird-watcher Simon Parr, winner of the largest Powerball payout in history. Is Teddy a witness—or a suspect?
Others include not only Parr’s wife, a famed suspense novelist, but fellow members of the birding club Parr had generously treated to their lavish Icelandic expedition. Hardly your average birders, several of them have had serious brushes with the law back in the States. Guessing that an American would best understand other Americans, police detective Thorvaald Haraldsson grudgingly concedes her innocence and allows Teddy to tag along with the group to volcanoes, glaciers, and deep continental rifts in quest of rare bird species.
But once another member of the club is murdered and a rockfall barely misses Teddy’s head, Haraldsson forbids her to continue. She ignores him and, in a stunning, solitary face-off with the killer in Iceland’s wild interior, concludes an investigation at once exotic, thrilling, and rich in animal lore.
Excerpt from The Puffin of Death
As he snapped yet another photograph of the black-yellow-and-white bird, Simon Parr congratulated himself. God only knew why the dumb thing had flown all the way from Egypt to this rough Icelandic hilltop overlooking the North Atlantic, but there it was, pecking its way towards the puffin burrow. Although the morning was chilly, what with that damp wind freezing the tops of his uncovered ears and bald head, he smiled. By sneaking away at four-thirty – the sun was almost up, for God’s sake! -- and leaving the rest of his group back at the hotel, he would be the first, and perhaps only, person on the tour to snag the hoopoe. So what if he’d forgotten his hat.
Note to self: even in August, Iceland is frigging cold.
But this trip was working out in more ways than one. First, the conversation back at the airport, where he’d told a certain someone exactly how things were, now the hoopoe. And afterwards… Well, better things were yet to come.
He heard a squawk.
The puffin, another visual weirdo with its oversized red, yellow and blue beak, had stuck its head out of its burrow and was sounding a warning. It wasn’t happy with the hoopoe’s incursion, but who cared what a puffin thought? There were millions of the nasty things up here, so if the hoopoe fouled the puffin’s living room, well, too bad. Parr didn’t like puffins, never had. Rats with wings, he’d once called them, bringing down the wrath of other birders at last month’s meeting of the Geronimo County Birding Association. But had they ever smelled a puffin rookery? It was enough to make a person gag.
The stench was worth it, though. Same for the damp north wind numbing his fingers. He’d have gone through all kinds of hell to get those shots of the directional-challenged hoopoe.
All things considered, the hoopoe wasn’t a bad-looking bird. Not stubby and ungainly, like that stupid puffin, but sleek, built for flight and speed. Black-tipped yellow crown. Long, narrow black bill. Dramatic black-and-white striped wings and tail. Bright yellow body. Given its extraordinary plumage, he could understand why there’d been such excitement when word of its arrival reached the hotel. But in the end, a bird was just a bird. Another notch on his belt, nothing more.
Note to self: hire a private trainer and get rid of that hint of pot belly. Well, he had the money now, didn’t he? He had the money to do a lot of things he couldn’t do before, including getting rid of…
Simon Parr was so busy thinking about his glorious future that he forgot about the hoopoe. He also didn’t hear footsteps approaching behind him. He didn’t even hear the gunshot, because by the time the sound reached his ears, he was already falling towards the puffin’s burrow, unaware of sound, sight, or any of the other senses typical of life. In fact, he would never hear another thing.
Or see another hoopoe.
Author Genre: Mystery & Thrillers
Website: Betty Webb - The Lena Jones mysteries
Author's Blog: Webb's Blog
Blog: Wikipedia
Twitter: @bettywebb
E-Mail: webbscottsdale@aol.com
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Facebook: Check Out Facebook
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Amazon Author Profile
Author Description: Former journalist Betty Webb is a prize-winning mystery novelist whose books are based on true crimes, including human rights abuses. Publishers Weekly called her novels "mysteries with a social conscience." She lives in Arizona, where her Lena Jones mysteries are set, and teaches writing at Arizona State University.
Author's Book List
The Llama of Death
- A Gunn Zoo MysteryZookeeper Theodora “Teddy” Bentley takes Alejandro, the Gunn Zoo llama, to a Monterey Bay-area Renaissance Faire only to discover the still-warm body of the Reverend Victor Emerson, owner of the local wedding chapel, dressed in his royal robes as Henry the Eighth.
At first it appears as if Alejandro stomped the man to death, but a closer look reveals a crossbow dart in the man’s back. Teddy’s investigation proves the “reverend” isn’t really a reverend at all — he’s an escaped convict, and every marriage he’s performed in the past twenty years is null and void. Teddy’s mother Caro, a spoiled ex-beauty queen, becomes the chief suspect and is immediately jailed when she causes a riot in the courtroom. The ”reverend” had twice married Caro to wealthy men, and when both marriages failed, Caro received large financial settlements. Now she may have to give all that money back, certainly a good enough reason to commit murder. But Caro wasn’t the only person gunning for Victor. The child of the man Victor once murdered may have wanted to kill him, too, and at one point, even Teddy herself is handcuffed and jailed. Even worse, Teddy’s embezzling father flies in from exile in Costa Rica to help spring Caro from jail, thus putting his own freedom in jeopardy.
As Teddy continues her investigation, she finds herself up to her ears in girl gang members, squabbling boat liveaboarders, Renaissance Faire actors and stuntmen, and assorted animals.
Written with a humorous touch, “The Llama of Death” portrays Renaissance Faire life, and gives the reader a rare behind-the-scenes look at modern zoos.
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Anteater of Death
- A Gunn Zoo MysteryThe Anteater was framed! But if Lucy, the pregnant Giant Anteater from Belize, didn’t kill the man found dead in her enclosure, who did? California zookeeper Teddy Bentley must find the real murderer before her furry friend is shipped off to another zoo in disgrace.
Then another human bites the dust, the monkeys riot, and the wolves go nuts. Things get worse when the snooty folks at Gunn Landing Harbor attempt to evict Teddy from the Merilee, her beloved houseboat. That’s just the beginning. Her father, on the lam from the Feds for embezzling millions, gets targeted by a local gangster; and Caro, Teddy’s socialite and former beauty queen mother who loathes Teddy’s dangerous job, starts introducing her to eligible bachelors. But Teddy has already given her heart to Sheriff Joe Rejas, a migrant worker’s son. Caro is not pleased. Zoo life, animal lore, and the leaky ups and downs of Central Coast California houseboat living create a thrilling backdrop for murder.
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The Koala of Death
- A Gunn Zoo MysteryWhen zoo keeper Theodora “Teddy” Bentley fishes the body of Koala Kate out of Gunn Landing Harbor, she discovers that her fellow zoo keeper didn’t drown; she was strangled. The clues to Koala Kate’s killer implicate other animal keepers at the Gunn Zoo, including Outback Bill, marsupial keeper and Kate’s Aussie ex-boyfriend; and Robin Chase, the big cat keeper who’s got it in for Teddy. Also displaying suspicious behavior are several “liveaboarders” at the harbor; Speaks-To-Souls, a shady “animal psychic”; and even Caro, Teddy’s much-married, ex-beauty queen mother. But murderers aren’t all Teddy has to worry about. Her embezzling father is still on the run from the Feds, and the motor on the Merilee, her beloved houseboat is failing. To pay for the repairs, Teddy agrees to appear on a weekly live television broadcast featuring misbehaving animals that range from Wanchu, a cuddly koala, to Abim, a panicky wallaby – and all hell breaks loose in the TV studio. To add to Teddy’s woes, the killer zeroes in on her with near-fatal results. The Koala of Death brings a return to Gunn Zoo and the social-climbing humans and eccentric animals that made the prize-winning The Anteater of Death so popular. Readers will enjoy this behind-the-scenes peek at zoo life, and learn that poor little rich girls like Teddy lead much more complicated lives that they’d ever imagine – especially when they’re tracking killers.
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Desert Rage
- A Lena Jones MysteryWhen a 14-year-old girl confesses to murdering her entire family, the girl's biological mother, an egg donor, hires P.I. Lena Jones to investigate the case. Because the egg donor is a rising politician running for U.S. Senate, she asks that the investigation be carried out discreetly, but some of the information Lena uncovers renders that a moot point. As it turns out, Dr. Arthur Cameron, the murdered father, has served as the Arizona state executioner for years, and some of the families of the men—and one woman—he dispatched in Arizona's notorious Death Chamber wanted their revenge.
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Desert Wind
- A Lena Jones MysteryAn old wrangler holds the key to hundreds of deaths in secretive Walapai Flats, Arizona, but the only person he’ll confide in is the ghost of John Wayne.
When P.I. Lena Jones's Pima Indian partner Jimmy Sisiwan is arrested in the remote northern Arizona town of Walapai Flats, Lena closes the Desert Investigations office and rushes to his aid. What she finds is a town up in arms over a new uranium mine located only ten miles from the magnificent Grand Canyon. Jimmy's sister-in-law, founder of Victims of Uranium Mining, has been murdered, but the opposing side is taken hits, too. Ike Donohue, the mine's public relations flak, is found shot to death, casting suspicion on Jimmy and his entire family. During Lena's investigation, she finds not only a community decimated by dangerous mining practices, but a connection to actor John Wayne and the mysterious deaths resulting from the 1953 filming of “The Conqueror.” Gabe Boone, a wrangler on that doomed film, is still alive, but the only person the aged man will confide in is John Wayne's ghost. It's up to Lena to penetrate Gabe's defenses and find out the decades-old tragedy no one in Walapai Flats wants to talk about. By delving into the area's history, Lena learns that old sins never die; they're still taking lives.
As with “Desert Wives: Polygamy Can Be Murder,” this seventh book in the Lena Jones series exposes real life crimes, and the reason why high-ranking government officials want those crimes to remain under wraps.
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Desert Noir
- A Lena Jones MysterySurvival in the upscale Scottsdale art scene depends on how well a private eye does her footwork… At the age of four, private detective Lena Jones had been found lying unconscious by the side of an Arizona highway, a bullet robbing her of her memories. Now the scarred survivor of a dozen foster homes, Lena has vowed to find the truth about her origins—no matter how terrible that truth might be.
In Desert Noir, the first of the Lena Jones mysteries, Lena’s quest is interrupted when her friend, heiress Clarice Kobe, is beaten to death in the Western Heart Art Gallery. Lena and her Pima Indian partner Jimmy Sisiwan at first suspect the art dealer’s abusive husband, but their investigations soon reveal that domestic violence was hardly the only problem in the victim’s troubled life. Clarice, for all her money and beauty, had a dark side; her enemies far outnumbered her friends. Among those who wished her dead are George Haozous, the fiery Apache artist whose graphic work she once banned from her gallery. Another enemy is Dulya Albundo, the daughter of an elderly Hispanic woman whose death was directly attributable to the art dealer’s greed. Even Clarice’s parents—wealthy land developers whose housing tracts have ravaged the beautiful Sonoran Desert—appear to be oddly untroubled by their daughter’s death. Lena’s search for Clarice’s killer brings violence back into her own life, yet it also brings her closer to the solution of her own mystery—her real identity. Set against the backdrop of the posh Scottsdale, Arizona art scene and the nearby Indian reservations, Desert Noir heralds the debut of a detective as wounded as her clients, a woman battling her own demons while trying to rescue others from theirs.
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Desert Wives
- A Lena Jones MysteryPolygamy can be murder! That’s what private detective Lena Jones learns when she helps thirteen year old Rebecca escape from Purity, a polygamy compound hidden in a desolate area near straddling Utah/Arizona border.
When Rebecca’s mother is arrested for the murder of Prophet Solomon Royal, Rebecca’s intended husband, Lena enters Purity masquerading as a polygamist wife to uncover the real murderer. In doing so, Lena finds out more than she bargained for—the shocking secret the cult’s Circle of Elders will kill to keep. During her investigations, Lena also discovers more about her own past. At the age of four she was found lying unconscious by the side of an Arizona highway, a bullet robbing her of her memories. Raised in a series of foster homes, Lena does not remember her real name nor the names of her parents. She thinks she has put the past behind her, but the sins of Purity’s polygamous mothers and fathers force her to reexamine the few memories she has of her own mother the woman who shot her…
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Desert Lost
- A Lena Jones MysteryWhile running surveillance in an industrial section of Scottsdale, P.I. Lena Jones discovers the body of a woman connected to Second Zion, an infamous polygamy cult based in northern Arizona. With the help of a former polygamist “sister wife,” Lena soon discovers a shocking secret: in a society where one man can have ten wives, nine men will have none. Second Zion makes certain these possible rivals don’t stick around by turning these young teens into Arizona’s “lost boys.”
While searching for the dead woman’s lost son, Lena is surprised by a visit from Madeline, the beloved foster mother from whom she’d been forcibly parted at the age of nine. Madeline’s presence renews Lena’s memories of her own damaged childhood and brings new clues to the identity of her biological parents, who seemingly abandoned her when she was four years old.
But their joyful reunion is interrupted when Lena learns that her close friend, television star Angel Grey, is being stalked by an increasingly violent mental patient. When Lena flies to Angel’s aid, she finds that danger has followed her to Hollywood.
Arizona polygamy and its discarded sons, the deceptively insulated world of Beverly Hills, and Lena’s lost past converge in a case fraught with danger.
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Desert Cut
- Lena Jones MysteriesWhile searching for a location for a new documentary, Lena Jones and director Warren Quinn stumble across the body of a mutilated young girl. Lena is suddenly reminded of her own rough childhood. Her investigation into the girl's death leads her into the small town of Los Perdidos, an Edenic town still alive with the memory of Geronimo's war. Here the hard life on the Arizona/Mexico border contrasts with Hollywood's slick production meetings, and the revival of an ancient practice is tempered by a growing underground railroad fighting to save its young victims.
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Desert Run
- Lena Jones MysteriesThings are never easy for Scottsdale private eye Lena Jones. Her partner in Desert Investigations is leaving for a wife and a job at Southwest Micro- Systems. Her old captain at the Scottsdale PD is moving home to Brooklyn. Now shes doing security for Warren Quinn, director of a documentary being shot at Papago Park about the German POW camp and the great escape of Christmas Eve, 1944, when some prisoners tunneled out and fled. And one surviving escapee, Kapitan Zur See Erik Ernsta man in his nineties confined to a wheelchair after a boating accidenthas just been murdered. Worse, his Ethiopian caregiver begs Lena to clear him as a suspect. Lena, experienced in probing the past for answers to the central mystery of her own life, learns that Ernst and two other POWs hid out in the rugged Superstition Mountains. Nearby, on Christmas Night, the Bollinger family was slaughtered. A jury didnt convict the only survivor, the teenage son. What might Chess Bollinger know about Ernstand vice versa? And how much can Lena trust Quinn, either as a client, a witness, or a lover? Webb combines evocative descriptions of place with fine historical research in a plot packed with twists. Publishers Weekly Webb effectively evokes the beauty of the Arizona desert. Booklist Betty Webb is a journalist and book reviewer for a major Phoenix area newspaper. She lives and writes in Scottsdale, Arizona.
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Desert Shadows: Publishing Can Be Murder
- Lena Jones MysteriesAfter Scottsdale publisher Gloriana Allerton is poisoned at the annual Southwestern Publishers' Convention and a Pima Indian friend is accused of the murder, Lena Jones begins to investigate the seldom talked about side of the business--racist publishing. To her horror, Lena finds herself rubbing elbows with extremist politicians and members of local fascist groups. Though she becomes a target for murder because of her investigations, an attempt against Lena Jones' life pales in comparison to what happens when she is granted a meeting with the Aryan Brotherhood leader at the Arizona State Prison complex. On her way to the Death Row visiting room, a Black trustee nicknamed "Green," because of his startling green eyes, looks into Lena's face. And calls her by her mother's name. Found shot in the head at the age of four, her memory gone, the green-eyed Lena Jones had been raised in a series of abusive foster homes which left her emotionally--and physically--scarred. For years, Lena had searched for her biological parents with the same intensity with which she searched for killers. But now, with a possible answer to her identity right in front of her, Lena begins to realize that the truth may come at a very high price... Her own life.
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