An Old Chaos

When a landslide kills six people and destroys several expensive homes, Madeline Thomas, principal chief of the Klalos, and geologist Charlie O Neill know something is rotten in Latouche County: the land should never have been built on. Sheriff s investigator Rob Neill uncovers a suppressed hazard warning and evidence of payoffs to county government, with the help of librarian Meg McLean. Rob leads an investigation that implicates local development bigwigs and county personnel, including his boss and mentor, the sheriff. Meanwhile someone will stop at nothing, even murder, to keep the cover-up covered up. Cop, librarian, nurse, sheriff, and even an Indian chief they are all viewpoint characters in Sheila Simonson s engrossing new mystery, An Old Chaos. Expanding our view of the microcosm of a rural Columbia Gorge town introduced in the critically praised Buffalo Bill s Defunct, Simonson portrays heroism as well as corruption in high and low places. And human fallibility s potential for diasaster is joined by the landscape s; as the eponymous Wallace Stevens poem says, We live in an old chaos of the sun.