Sarah Andrews (1)Resenhas

rabck from JennyC1230 via abc bookbox; light "who dunnit", 9th in a series, but read just fine as a standalone. Em is studying in Utah to be a forensic geologist. A friend introduces her to Tert, who wants her to authenticate a painting to determine if it's fake or not, confidentially of course. Paint pigments are just ground up minerals, and she needs a master's thesis after all. Her investigation takes here from Wyoming, where she's living with a friend to DC to meet with the FBI and Art Museum, and finally near my stomping grounds of Lancaster County, which has a fascinating Mennonite history, where she meets with some Pa experts. Artist paints, before synthetics, were made from heavy metals, which are toxins (and that's why there are so many superfund sites in this area - because the minerals were mined with no precautions and metals dumped into the water). A good read.

This falls into the good, definitely not great category. I was ready to give it 3-1/2 stars because I really liked the paleontology and geology and science-speak parts. But the ending was fairly atrocious. The story more-or-less plodded along and then turned stupid. In the finale the good guys go charging ahead doing stuff no one would ever do, and half end up dead... and rightly so. Then the heroine and hero stumble around for probably 10 hours being chased by the bad guys and gals and children and dogs, but cold and beaten and hypothermic and thrashed within an inch of their lives by cactus and all the other spiny things every living organism that inhabit in the desert possess they come out the other side intact. Which is good because all that death and near-death was the ticket to finding blissful and eternal happiness.

The main character Emily Hansen is reminiscent of Nevada Barr’s Anna Pigeon. I like the Anna Pigeon character, but Emily Hansen is a mess. This book was more about her soul searching and self-exploration than murder mystery... unless the mystery is who is Em Hansen? The other characters were okay, but all maybe a bit too sketchy.

Anyway, like I said above the story just kind of plodded along and a lot of various things happened like people being killed, people being chased, homes being ransacked and stuff being stolen, people being shot at, people being followed, and a child bride suddenly appearing and disappearing. It all makes some sense and it all makes no sense, but fortunately at the very end the heroine and hero overhear the bad guys talking about their crimes and tie it all together for us. You know, that’s how most crimes and mysteries are solved. Then the book just ended. The bad guys were still on the loose, but apparently would be rounded up and the dead collected, but for our purposes the story was fini.

The geology and water discussions were interesting... but a bit too much information that had nothing to do with the story. I find the idea that the police would even have such a person as a forensic geologist on their staff, let alone want her to get involved in solving a mystery...somewhat unbelievable. Another disturbing thing was the way the men in Em's life talked and speculated about her. This seemed to be sexual harassment and not professional on either her part or theirs. The murder was an interesting one in all it's "goriness"...hence the 3 stars. It could have easily been a 4 star, or even a 5 for some, if more time had been spent on the mystery itself.

Maybe it was that I started with the forth book in the series because my library didn't have the first, but I was very disappointed with this book. Characters are not believable and just highly disappointing and cut-short ending.

I found it difficult to keep track of the characters and thought it was a little bit "preachy". I learned a lot about Antarctica but there was not enough action to hold my interest.

My gripes: I was hoping for a bit more forensic geology, since that is the unique draw to this series, the forensic geologist sleuth. The story in this novel revolves around a thesis that likens terrorism to stalking, which I didn't find convincing enough, though the author does draw out some similarities between these types of violence. The conversations within this novel that are about ideas, scientific or political, come across more as the sort of banter one might hear in graduate student offices, even when the characters involved are decidedly not academics. And, for all the Em, the heroine, is supposed to be starting her Master's degree in geology, she has some alarming gaps in her knowledge, which allow the author to instruct the reader on various science terms and concepts, but which make me wonder how many undergraduate courses Em needs to take still before she is actually ready to start taking graduate courses.
And, I really disliked how willing Em is to be patronized and protected by her boyfriend and his friend. Em has only been dating Jack for 6 months or so, yet she seems to think because she's slept with Jack once in all that time, she should know him very, very well, which is silly. If she seemed like that sort of person, it wouldn't be quite so annoying, but as she comes across in this book, Em's character seems too inconsistent. And, for a 40 year old woman in modern times, since when is sleeping with her boyfriend once such a big deal. She is not, after all, fundamentalist Christian. She's old enough to have had more experience with relationships than she seems to be drawing on.

What I liked: The novelty of having a semi-professional scientist as a sleuth was part of what drew me to this book at the library, along with my curiosity about forensic geology. (I checked this book out because it was on the first shelf of the A's at my library, and I am reading the A's, but it still looked interesting.)I liked that the female characters in this book have strong roles, and I liked the bits where the author shows some of the subtle ways that women face discrimination in academia and in agencies like NASA. It was also creative the way the story links domestic stalking with domestic terrorism, though the part about Jack and his buddies sneaking around foiling terrorists without any sort of intelligence agency or military support/knowledge seemed a bit odd.

If you’re going to write mystery novels of the “special expert” subgenre - when the detective is a geologist or an anthropologist or an authority on automobile hood ornaments - the conventions demand that:


*the reader must have all the information the special expert has; you’re not allowed to have the murderer’s identity hinge on the fact that a 1947 Pontiac hood ornament has 11 feathers on the headdress instead of 12 unless your hood ornament special expert has dropped this fact into casual conversation a couple of hundred pages earlier, and


*all, or at least the major percentage, of the information your special expert drops should have some relationship to the mystery; if there’s a four page digression on The Spirit Of Ecstasy on a Rolls-Royce hood, that better be important later on.


Sarah Andrews is pretty popular in geologic circles. She appears at book signings at every GSA convention and conducts a charity auction for the chance to appear as a character in her next novel. The books are pleasant enough reads, but the geologist heroine, Em Hansen, is getting a little frustrating. For one thing, Ms. Andrews approach to convention (1) is to have Em Hansen be startlingly ignorant of basic geology, despite being a 40-year-old graduate student. That way, more experienced geologists can explain things to her (and the reader) that should be obvious to anybody who’s sat through Geology for Poets in college. Admittedly, Dead Dry is slightly better than some of the previous ones, in that Em gets to do a little of the explaining herself, but it’s still done awkwardly. Convention (2) is even more of a problem; there’s quite a bit of geological explanation scattered through the book, including alluvial deposition mechanics, synorogenous deposition and groundwater hydrology, that has very little bearing on the mystery. Too many red herrings.


Finally, Em’s personal life is described at length, to the extent that these could just as easily be classified as romance novels as mysteries. (There’s room for a whole new subgenre there, I suppose: The Special Expert Romance Novel, in which the heroine’s love life revolves around her being a hood ornament specialist). I suppose this is OK if you are in the mood for it; I’m fond of the Laurel Hamilton novels that combine action/adventure, mystery, romance, and supernatural - but Em Hansen just doesn’t pull it off as well as Anita Blake.


Just barely three stars - and only if you’re interested in geology,

This good murder mystery is part of Ms. Andrews' Em Hansen, Geologist, series. The 1st book in the series is Tensleep if you want to start at the beginning. Ms. Andrews is a geologist herself who started her career with the U.S. Geological Survey.

This is a very good story for a first in series. Emily (or Emmy or Em) is a mudlogger on an oil field in western Wyoming. When two people on the team are found dead, Em is drawn into a murder investigation. Andrews provides plenty of oil drilling lore and expertise so I learned a few things along the way.

There are some great characters here, especially the two victims! Em starts out being very timid, very withdrawn and very scared but she grows and changes as the book moves along. When I first started the book I wasn't sure I would finish it, and if I did I wasn't sure I would read more in the series because Em was so uncertain a person. But, she started to gain more confidence and more personality and that made the book work for me.

I'll give the next in the series a try to see if my optimism is confirmed.

a new series! Investigative geologist Em Hansen helps solves a murder involving water shortages and development in Utah, using her knowledge of geology, intuition and smarts. There is a lot about geology and water usage, at times a bit preachy, but very well explained. Sympathetic 40 year old single woman character. Got to go get the others in the series...this is #5

Did not finish. Wah wah. Wah wah wah wah. I didn't make it far; but several things annoyed me immediately. Valena on one page doesn't want to seem TOO interested in making friends with one man. On the very next page, she's changing into a curve hugging fleece top before she goes to the mess hall for the very first time. Also, the dialog is stiff; and Andrews spends a lot of time telling not showing. Meh.

Valena Walker is a young glaciology graduate student who has secured a place on Professor Emmett Vanderzee’s Antarctic team. Unfortunately upon arrival in Antarctica she is told that Vanderzee has been arrested and taken back to the US and she too will have to leave as soon as there’s a spare seat on a flight out. Walker discovers that during the previous year’s work on the continent a journalist who was critical of Vanderzee’s work died from what was thought to be altitude sickness while on a visit to Vanderzee’s camp but now new evidence indicates the death was not an accident. Desperate not to leave Antarctica she decides to investigate the matter to see if she can determine what really happened.

The standout feature of the novel for me was the picture it painted of life in Antarctica. Unlike other books I’ve read that are set there, the action in this one takes place in and around McMurdo Station which is a temporary home to more than 1300 people and I’d never really thought about Antarctica having its own small town before. With talk of ‘the season’, the need to haul in all the equipment and supplies one might need from half a world away and the competition between research teams for resources and kudos I was reminded of the many books I’ve read (fact and fiction) based in and around early archaeological digs in Egypt. I don’t know if the author has been there (her website says she was hoping to go there but it hasn’t been updated for quite some time) or has just spoken to people who have but she certainly made it seem very realistic and provided quite fascinating details of day-to-day life in the crowded isolation. Not surprisingly, because Andrews is a geologist and a professor, the scientific details and discussions about science-related issues such as global warming have an air of authenticity and add an interesting aspect to the book.

As far as characterisations go I thought the best of these were at a group level rather than an individual one. We are shown the scientists (beakers), the tractor drivers (with their own very Pythonesque club), the administrators and so on and, as much as any group generalisation can be realistic, these felt quite natural and showed what kinds of people might be drawn to work in such a place and how they might react to the location. We don’t really get to know any single person other than Valena in any depth and for me this is a bit of a disappointment as I’d much rather get to know individuals. Valena is depicted quite realistically for the most part: generally strong with some credible glimpses of the uncertainties that a woman of her age would display in the kinds of stressful situations she encountered. I didn’t fall in love with her but liked her and wanted to see how things would turn out for her.

The only part of the book that was a bit of a letdown was the mystery itself. Although there are the requisite number of suspects and red-herrings there really isn’t much in the way of suspense and for a good deal of the book there’s barely any action on the mystery front at all as we observe the day-to-day goings on at McMurdo. At times it felt like the author was trying to squeeze in all the interesting things she knew about living and working in Antarctica to the detriment sometimes of plot development.

Although it’s not the best example of a mystery you will find In Cold Pursuit is a good read, especially for those with an interest in science. It hasn’t convinced me that any scientific knowledge humanity has gained from our presence in Antarctica will prove to have been worth the cost of finding the last pristine bit of the planet and covering it in buildings, vehicles and all the other detritus that accompanies us wherever we go but I did enjoy it as a unique reading experience. It appears that all of Andrews’ previous novels feature a forensic geologist and amateur sleuth Em Hansen, a character who makes a brief appearance at the other end of an email in this novel, and I enjoyed this one enough to seek out another book in this series.

The stock advice to new writers is to write what you know. And oil field geologist, turned environmental remediation professional, turned author Sarah Andrews, did just that for her debut novel. The strength of Tensleep is that Sarah clearly knows the life she portrays of being a woman making her way in the dirty world of oil drilling, a world many of us only glimpse. The weakness of Tensleep, is that like many fledgling novelists, Sarah didn't quite strike the right balance between describing the detailia of life on a rig with the actions, motivations, feelings and personification of the characters. There were also a few plot holes, not too bad for a typically formulaic genre.

Tensleep was promising enough that I will put the next in the series [b:A Fall in Denver|768217|A Fall in Denver (Em Hansen Mystery, #2)|Sarah Andrews|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1315074723s/768217.jpg|754281]on my TBR list, but not so enthralling to catapult reading more in this series to the top of a very long list.

Once I hit my stride in Only Flesh and Bones it was hard for me to stop. I wanted to see what Em was going to uncover next and how she was going to get herself in trouble - something she never fails to disappoint us with. There were elements of this book I found somewhat rare for the genre - the crime was around a year old and the focus of the investigation was a dead woman and the only way we got to know her was through journals. It was an enjoyable change of pace, but didn’t stray too far from what I expected.

Generally I really like letting some time pass between reading books in a series. I find most of the time it allows me to enjoy the story more fully because I’m not too in tune with an author’s quirks. There are times when I curse waiting though because sometimes series fall by the wayside as I get distracted by more new series. This is rarely due to a lack in series quality. Such has been the case for the Em Hansen series by Sarah Andrews. It was hastened by the fact that my local library had a hole in their collection and did not have book 4 on the shelves so I had to do an interlibrary loan to get my hands on it. While I often hesitate to ILL a fiction book I am glad I did.

It was very enjoyable to be reminded how Em is a non-traditional amateur sleuth. She is a geologist by training and a good bit of her experience. This background of scientific analysis and training influences her detecting greatly. Being a scientist by training myself I really enjoy how well Andrews has nailed most of the women scientist/engineers I know in her development of Em. She slips into my mind like a good friend from college, no matter how much time has passed. I will confess that it took me a bit to get sucked into this book, though I think that was mostly because I couldn’t readily recall everything that had gone down in the third book.

I very much enjoyed this read and will do my best to not let so much time lapse before I dive into book 5!

I have read several mysteries by Sarah Andrews. She is excellent at writing about landscapes, geology, and the science v creationism debate - and here she has the canvas of the Grand Canyon to work with. But the mystery is perfunctory and even a doofus such as I was instantly able to see whodunnit. This would have been better as a nonfiction book about rafting the Grand Canyon - I would really have enjoyed that.

Sarah Andrews' Em Hansen, forensic geologist returns on a Grand Canyon raft trip. This book is more appreciated for its sense of place and description of what it is like for a geologist to be in the canyon but the mystery is ok too. Fans of previous books will enjoy developments in Em's personal life as well. I've rafted the canyon in a group of geologists, so I can say she gets that part right.

The strength and weakness of this book is that it is based on a two-month stint the author spent in Antarctica. She does a great job of writing about the places she visited and the people she met there (or their fictional analogues), but the attempt to graft a thriller plot onto the travelogue doesn't work so well, as the protagonist of the thriller goes on side trips that tell the reader a lot about Antarctica and about climate science but threaten to derail the plot.

So, if I was rating "In Cold Pursuit" purely on its thriller elements, I would give it about three stars - but, if you are at all interested in fictional descriptions of Antarctica, people who choose to live in Antarctica, climate change, and the way science is done, as I am, it's well worth four stars.

Valena Walker is living her dream of traveling to Antarctica to work on her master's degree. She has snagged an assistantship with a well-known and respected glaciologist, Dr Emmett Vanderzee. But as soon as she arrives, Valena learns that Vanderzee has been arrested for murder. In order to stay in Antarctica, Valena needs to clear the professor's name. To do this, she seeks out all the people who were at the camp where the death occurred. This takes her on the adventure of a life time, and brings her close to danger, when another suspicious death occurs.

I enjoyed this book. The mystery was good and I liked the way the clues were given to the reader. There is also a lot about Antarctica, ice and global warming. I found all this very interesting but it might not be everyone's cup of tea. We also get introduced to a large group of eccentrics who are the people who dare to inhabit this very dangerous continent. I enjoyed the people, but there were just a few too many and I sometimes lost who different folks were. But overall, a very good Summer read.

This book by Sarah Andrews is a very enjoyable read for me. It is a mystery but a mystery written In Antarctica, so you learn a lot about Antarctics, about which I knew nothing. Good characters and a good plot make the book well worth reading and enjoying.

J. Robert Ewbank author "John Wesley, Natural Man, and the 'Isms'"

Sarah Andrews is one of my favorite authors because she uses landscape and industry so well to build a story around. This mystery takes place in Sonoma County, California and the denouement pivots on hydrology.

While there is a mystery, the main thrust of this novel is split between geological explanations of plate tectonics and the personal life of Em Hansen. The on-going friendships she is developing with Faye and Tom are interesting and the characters are likable. What really ruined my enjoyment of the novel were the on-going inaccuracies in the way Ms. Andrews portrayed Mormons. Just a few examples: Mormon missions last two years, not one. Any Mormon who is as straight-arrow as Ray is portrayed would not have gotten married at 19 - he'd be on one of those two year missions. And you'd be hard pressed to find a place to rent in Salt Lake City where anyone would care if you had a member of the opposite sex in your space. Finally - I don't really know any Mormon women (myself included) that figure our role in life is to be subservient to our spouses and to get busy making babies. After three novels set in this environment, it seems to me that Ms. Andrews would have invested a little more time in making the setting realistic instead of just using stereotypes. It made the mystery less believable because much of it rested on these faulty assumptions.½

Em's personal conflict between her professional gifts and the love she feels for a man from a religious culture completely foreign to her are central to this novel. The mystery is interesting, as is the geology (as always). One interesting aspect of the crime portion of the novel was how many different "wrong" things were going on, and which one of all of them the FBI was really interested in.

Substance: An interesting milieu (Denver) and protagonist (mudlogger-turned-engineer) and mystery (serial suicides in the oil business), but I bailed before page 100.
Style: Pedestrian TV fare.½

The mystery was interesting, as well as the subject. My only objection was that Ms. Andrews portrayed the Mormons in her book unrealistically. She wasn't particularly negative, just not accurate. I enjoyed the information about fossil "hunting" in Utah - I've been to some of the places described in the book and that was fun. I'm really curious to see what happens with the potential love interest that was introduced in this book.

The mystery was pretty good, and the information about life in Antarctica was interesting, but the writing was uneven. Ms. Andrews couldn't seem to decide what to focus on. Sometimes the novel sounded more like a case for climate change or conversely, a description of life in Antarctica, than an actual story. It got in the way of enjoying the novel for me. I've read better books from Ms. Andrews