Diving in: 'The Arizona Triangle' full of crisp, snappy dialogue and perceptive psychological profiles

Kate Christensen’s last book, published 10 months ago, was the widely praised novel “Welcome Home, Stranger.” It was mostly set in Portland, Maine.

An earlier Christensen novel, “The Great Man,” won the 2008 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.

Just released is her debut detective novel, “The Arizona Triangle.” It falls in the category of a whodunit and is published under Christensen’s pen name Sydney Graves.

The protagonist is Justine “Jo” Bailen, who works for an all-female detective agency in Tucson.

Diving in: 'The Arizona Triangle' full of crisp, snappy dialogue and perceptive psychological profiles

The hard-driving Jo is looking into the disappearance of Rose Delaney, specifically at the request of Rose’s mother, Laura. Rose and Jo were childhood friends until ninth grade. Their friendship exploded over a boy they both loved and perhaps, as adults, are still enamored with — Tyler Bridgewater.

Tyler is the third side of this love triangle.

The action picks up when Rose is found dead, hanging from a cottonwood tree in the small (fictional) Arizona town of Delphi where Rose, Jo and Tyler had grown up.

Not only does Jo want to learn who has information about Rose’s disappearance and death, but she must confront the lingering question:

Did Rose commit suicide or was she murdered?

Jo has a plate full of characters to interview, among them her mother, her squirrely two half-brothers and, of course, Tyler.

A less than honorable Delphi cop, Tyler, is assigned to probe Rose’s death. Tyler’s probe, however, is in the shadow of Jo’s investigation, which drives the plot.

Tyler’s personal life comes under scrutiny from Jo. He’s married and a father of four kids, though that doesn’t stop him from taking a mistress. Jo herself has a one-night stand with Lupita, a member of a local ranching family.

Christensen writes crisp, snappy dialogue and perceptive psychological profiles.

However, descriptions of some characters’ clothing and home furnishings slow the pace.

Here are a few examples:

Jo is meeting in the Phoenix home of Ben’s sponsor. Ben, one of Rose’s half-brothers, is in Narcotics Anonymous.

Christensen writes: “… In the adjoining living room, two facing snow-white couches sat on the continuation of the baby-blue carpeting, along with a Lucite coffee table holding oversize art books and a side table arrayed with coasters and candles.”

Another scene has Jo in the Bridgewater family kitchen to interview Linda, Tyler’s widow. (Yes, Tyler dies, impaled on a large steel agave sculpture. Murder or accident?)

Linda slides a rack of cookies into the oven “and brushed her hands on the front of her short denim skirt … Her dark hair was held back by a pink headband. She wore a white sleeveless blouse and pink Meds with no socks.”

Christensen compares Linda’s looks to a TV mom in a classic old sitcom, except for her eyes, “which were clouded, vacant, stunned with grief.”

Christensen explained how the idea for “The Arizona Triangle” came about.

“Toward the end of the COVID lockdown, I was working on the third draft of ‘Welcome Home, Stranger,’ living in a remote New Hampshire farmhouse with my husband and dogs. The third draft was gnarly and not working, so I put it aside and, for sheer fun, started ‘The Arizona Triangle.’

“I’ve always wanted to write detective fiction; it’s my favorite genre. It was like finally giving myself permission to dive in,” Christensen said in an email.

Christensen wrote that she’s been influenced by three streams of detective fiction — the gritty Scandinavian police investigations, most notably by Jo Nesbø and Henning Mankell; the clever, cerebral British murder-puzzles, namely those by Dorothy L. Sayers and Dick Francis; and California noir, particularly books by Sue Grafton and Raymond Chandler.

“Besides geography, the other driving engine of detective fiction is human psychology,” Christensen wrote.

“All the detective fiction I most love is about character and atmosphere as much as it is about plot, if not more. A murder is a rip in the fabric that holds civilization together; the social order is shaken.

“It’s like a bomb going off in a small town, and everyone is sprayed with the shrapnel. In order to show this, a detective writer needs to create a believable network of people around the crime,” the author wrote in the email.

Christensen grew up in Tempe, Phoenix and Jerome, Arizona, and spent a lot of time in the last decade in and around Tucson. She lives in Taos.