Returning to Taos
Lois Gilbert
Five Star, Feb 2006, $26.95
ISBN: 1594144370

Ten years ago Elena Water left her husband Tom in Taos, New Mexico, taking her son Johnny with her. A few years later, Johnny left her to study music and live in Taos under the tutelage of family friends Jack and Maggie Dalton, who run a musical production company. As Johnny is becoming a success, someone shoots and kills him. Elena, who had not spoken to her son in months or seen him in five years, is stunned by her loss.

As the cops fail to break the case, Elena arrives in Taos vowing to bring justice to her son's murderer. Tom and Maggie are worried about her mental state as she insists she is talking with Johnny who is giving her some clues to his homicide, though her findings are uncannily accurate. Because Johnny refuses to tell her who killed him, she assumes he is protecting someone, perhaps a loved one, but who had the motive to commit homicide?

RETURNING TO TAOS is a haunting amateur sleuth tale in which the audience wonders whether Elena is losing her mind, though she seems to easily converse with Johnny. Thus, fans will ponder paranormal or psychological; either way the audience gets a deep look inside the grieving mother who finds no closure, perhaps because she was somewhat estranged from her son who she cherished, but failed to let him know that when he was alive (underlying message: don't wait - tell your loved ones while they live). Regardless of Elena's state of mind, RETURNING TO TAOS is a powerful mystery, with a terrific twist that grips readers from the first "mother-son conversation" inside her head until their last.