Buried by the Roan
by Mark Stevens
People’s Press, 2011
Softcover, 348 pages, $14.95
ISBN: 978-0-9817810-9-9
Reviewed by Elliot Jackson
OK, let me see if I’ve got this straight: our heroine in Buried by the Roan is plucky Allison Coil, yet another average working-girl mystery heroine – who always seems to be at least 40 pounds lighter and quite a bit blonder and petite-er than the average American working girl. Because of a personal crisis (she survives a plane crash), she is inspired to leave her yuppie existence in the big city and become a hunting guide in the Western Slope wilderness. And really, this is the sort of thing that could happen to anybody. Particularly a woman with no apparent previous wilderness or hunting experience.
So we have the obligatory death (one of her clients on a hunting trip, a rancher who is embroiled in a land dispute with – wait for it – an environmentalist). At this point in the story, I am hearing my internal Mike Myers chiming hopefully: “Is he an EVIL environmentalist?” Yes, as it turns out, he is! And he’s even on the cover of High Country News!