'Death in the Land of Enchantment' unravels layers of mystery

Holly Harrison’s mystery novel “Death in the Land of Enchantment” makes you wait six chapters before the identity of the murder victim is revealed.

That victim is Webster Madison, his body found on the floor of his Santa Fe residence, knife plunged into his heart. Yet the stab wound may not even be the cause of Madison’s death.

The novel, largely set in Santa Fe, is actually layered with mysteries. Mysteries that will need a resolution.

“Death in the Land of Enchantment” seeks answers to the basic questions one finds in a murder mystery — who killed the victim and why.

Leading the police investigative team is Louise Sanchez. The murder of Madison is her first assignment as a detective after years as a uniformed police officer.

Sanchez initially tries to determine why the person went to the Santa Fe Depot, the Rail Runner train’s northern end-of-the-line stop, to call in the murder. She is identified as Madison’s housekeeper, Camille Lautrec.

Sanchez must also figure out if the caller really was Madison’s housekeeper, and if that even is the housekeeper’s real name.

The caller’s identity and her surprise relationship to Madison — aren’t learned until the final chapters of the book.

Meanwhile, Sanchez uses her time looking into a handful of suspects who may have had a reason to kill the handsome, wealthy, middle-aged Madison.

The first is Justine Dupont, who, strangely, is introduced in the prologue. Dupont is a magazine writer who interviews Madison for an article about a Santa Fe-based online dating website for seniors.

Dupont is attracted to Madison, as many women seem to be. But she tells herself she’s not going to pursue a relationship with him. Still, she gave him her phone number.

Dupont is a married woman and she tells herself she wouldn’t cheat on her husband, a man suffering from dementia. Yet she tells herself that she yearns to feel like a woman.

Another possible suspect is Lautrec.

Lautrec isn’t the young woman who notified police about the murder. She turns out to be a much older woman than the person described by the train station attendant. And maybe she isn’t even a housekeeper.

Sanchez interviews Lautrec at the upscale Santa Fe condominium where she lives.

She tells Sanchez that she had just moved to Santa Fe to take a job as head of the costume department at the Santa Fe Opera.

Turns out that she had known Madison from their college days. Maybe even “known” in the biblical sense.

Madison had been an attorney for a private equity firm Albatross in Santa Fe, apparently a shell company being investigated for money laundering. Sanchez’s team tries to track down the owner of Albatross, who becomes a suspect in Madison’s murder.

Harrison’s murder-mystery spills over with sidebars, some related to the murder investigation, others indirectly.

Several sidebars involve Sanchez’s personal life — e.g. she takes up early-morning running with Ruiz’s girlfriend; she wants to get to know the female medical examiner socially; and she is surprised by the contents of a trunk in the attic of the Mora ranch of her just-deceased uncle. The trunk contains centuries-old Jewish prayer shawls, a skullcap and a menorah. Those religious items are unrelated to the murder.

Some sidebars concern Pascal Ruiz, the detective Sanchez replaced in the murder probe.

In one sidebar, Ruiz, who was placed on administrative leave, is on trial facing criminal charges related to his having blown out the door of a warehouse.

Sanchez ignores her captain’s warning to avoid any contact with Ruiz.

In a separate sidebar, Ruiz’s father’s girlfriend goes missing. Ruiz is suspicious of the 39 sealed boxes in her locked studio. Do the boxes contain missing or stolen or just stored Native American pottery?

Sanchez learns that’s the exact same number of boxes of ancient Native American pottery that went missing during a transfer from a museum to a new state facility.

The novel has too many sidebars for readers track as they try to follow the main storyline. The book could have benefitted from less chatty dialogue. And over several chapters, Harrison repeats and repeats the word “reek.”

“Death in the Land of Enchantment” is Harrison’s second published mystery. The first was “Rites and Wrongs.” She is working on a third mystery, this one set in Albuquerque.

“Mysteries are fun,” Harrison said. “They give you a path to solve a story. Literary novels are more conceptual. In mysteries, I really like developing characters.”

The author lives in West Old Town in Albuquerque. She is a member of SouthWest Writers, The Authors Guild and the Croak and Dagger chapter of Sisters in Crime.