Lena Padget is a private investigator. She and her lover Joel Mendez, a Lexington, Kentucky, police detective, are taking the first steps in setting up housekeeping together. She is approached by Miranda and Paul Brady to look into the disappearance of Cheryl Dunkirk, Miranda’s older stepsister and Paul’s stepdaughter. Joel has been working on the case for two months. Cheryl’s blood-spattered car has been found so the supposition is that she is dead, but there’s no body. Lena’s accepting the job puts a strain on her relationship with Joel.

Cheryl, a college student, has been working as an intern with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms in the Lexington office. There are rumors that she has been having a Chandra Levy-style affair with Cory Edgers, who’s been temporarily assigned to the ATF from his position with a local sheriff’s office.

Wilson McCoy is an ATF agent in California. He is sent to Tennessee and Kentucky to investigate the apparent assassinations of several ATF and FBI agents. The connection between the victims is that they were all present at Waco during the assault on the Branch Davidians’ compound. Wilson himself was there; he has a permanent limp from a bullet wound he received in the fighting. The investigation has established a link between the location of the assassinations to the rodeo circuit.

Janis Winters is fearless rodeo clown. The death of her sister and nephew at Waco has left her emotionally scarred and estranged from her family.

Kate Edgers is Cory’s wife. She lives with her possibly autistic son in a remote mountain locale. Cory is rarely at home; his job with the ATF requires a lot of traveling. When Kate learns that he has made changes in his insurance including removing her as a driver from their automobile insurance, she starts to wonder about her future.

Yes, it all comes together in the end. The ending, however, is something of a disappointment. One plot is satisfactorily resolved; the other gets an out-of-the-blue wrap-up that is going to leave even the most astute armchair detective reeling. It’s as though the author was either (1) desperately searching for motivation and anything would do and/or (2) desperately searching for a way to redeem her character and nothing was too farfetched. In any work of fiction but particularly a mystery, a satisfactory conclusion is an essential part of the story line.

Character development is the book’s strength. Each of the four major characters is multi-dimensional and well developed, something unexpected in a book that announces it is “A Lena Padget Novel” on the cover. It’s the strength of the characters that holds the reader’s interest even when the story line seems disjointed.

Fortunes of the Dead is the second Lena Padget mystery. I haven’t read the first but didn’t feel at a loss. Allusions to events in the first are minimal and placed in such a context that they don’t overwhelm the narrative.

In spite of the plot weaknesses, readers who enjoy complex plots and strong characters may find Fortunes of the Dead a good choice.

--Lesley Dunlap