Still recuperating from her father's death and her mother's recovery from alcohol addiction, geologist and amateur sleuth Emily "Em" Hansen is out of work and unhappily whiling away her time on her family's Wyoming ranch. So when her former boss, oil millionaire J.C. Menken, asks Em for help--and offers to find her a job if she does--she has no choice but to accept. J.C. wife Miriam died a mysterious death--and his teenaged daughter Cecelia was the only witness. But a traumatized Cecelia can't remember anything about the incident, and can't seem to get on with her life. J.C. wants Em to help his daughter get back on track--but will he want to hear the shocking truths that Em uncovers about his deceased wife and the real reason for her untimely death? Oil geologist and reluctant crime solver Em Hansen is one of the most interesting characters in recent mystery fiction--a strong woman with believable weaknesses and none of the smugness or coyness that bog down heroines of other, better-selling series. At the start of her fourth book, Sarah Andrews has Em helping her distant mother deliver a calf on the family ranch in Wyoming and wondering about her career choices: "If I hadn't found my own way to the edge, life might have been quite different for me. I might have had what it took to stay on my parents' ranch, or found myself married up to a neighboring spread, instead of heading off into these other lives of mine...." Luckily for us, Em's other lives--chronicled so sharply in A Fall in Denver , Tensleep , and Mother Nature --all available in paperback--make for rewarding reading. The latest book begins with an offer from a patronizing ex-boss to help the unemployed Em find a job--if she will try to discover why his 16-year-old daughter, Cecilia, is having such a hard time getting over the suspicious death of her mother. Em has to dig deeply into Cecilia's repressed memory and the dead woman's heartbreaking journals before some glimpse of the truth is revealed--and her search is suspenseful, poignant, and surprisingly sensual. --Dick Adler Geologist Em Hansen, the unhappy heroine of this series (Mother Nature, 1997, etc.), is helping out at the Wyoming ranch inherited by her recently widowed mother, and is also recovering from her fathers death and the loss of her job in Denver with now-defunct Blackfeet Oil, when shes visited by Joe Menken, her old boss at Blackfeet. Some months ago, Joes wife Miriam suffered a violent deathseemingly of forced cocaine poisoning--in the ranch house she and teenage daughter Cecelia had rented for the summer. The case is still unsolved, and a traumatized Cecelia remembers nothing, even though shed placed a hysterical emergency call at the time. Therapy isnt working, and Joe wants Em, who had been close to the girl, to come back to Denver and try to help his daughter while he assists in Ems job search. Settled in a rented room, Em is soon entangled is a multifaceted investigation--finding more productive therapy for Cecelia; studying Miriams diaries, which detail her attraction to one Chandler, a mysterious blond hunk; and suspecting all kinds of chicanery at possible employer Boomer Oil, headed by Fred Howard, sometimes seen in the company of reputed hit man Al Rosenblatt. Ems periodic reports to old friend Sergeant Carlos Ortega of the Denver police, and his fervent warnings, dont halt her increasingly frantic, eventually successful stabs at finding Miriams killer--a near deadly solo flight in a plane included. Chaotic plotting, unconvincing characters, reams of psychobabble, going-nowhere dialogue, and more than you ever wanted to know about oil drilling and flying alone: an ambitious downer. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. "Sexy and intriguing. I dare you to read the first page and put this book down."--Susan Dunlap, author of No Immunity "After a few more cases, geologist Em Hansen may be as tough as the best of her sleuthing peers, but her vulnerability offers singular pleasures to current readers."-- Publishers Weekly "Her tale contains a canny, entertaining mixture of elements...The intersections of new money and old ways of living in the West find a convincing chronicler in Andrews."-- Washington Post Book World Andrews's writing has a certain operatic excess that makes characters seem a shade overdrawn in their dramatic intensity. But her tale contains a canny, entertaining mixture of elements.... Only Flesh and Bones ONECALVING is a cruel season in Wyoming. My father always brought the pregnant cows, in their last weeks, up from the far pastures so he could keep an eye on them in case they needed help, but instinct always moved each cow, in her own time, down to the cover of cottonwood trees by the creek. The rare calf would come by daylight and warm weather, but far too many dropped soaking wet from their hundred-degree mothers into subzero air by the dead of night. The first part to freeze was their ears.In the morning