The Devil’s Kitchen: A Murder in Yellowstone

DEBUT Thielman’s first novel, following success with short stories and novellas published in anthologies and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Black Cat Weekly, and Mystery Magazine, launches his Johnson and Nance series, set in U.S. National Parks. Clarence Johnson, a retired Fort Worth homicide detective, has taken a job as a seasonal guide at Yellowstone, hoping to decompress. But then a park visitor on one of Johnson’s tours finds the corpse of a history professor at the base of Yellowstone Canyon. Park Service Special Agent Alison Nance is assigned the case, but as the bodies pile up, she decides she could use the help of Johnson as an experienced homicide investigator. Foreshadowing a motive in the dual-timeline novel is the story of Aristede, an art student during the French Revolution who is tasked with protecting the Scepter of Dogobert (one of the last remaining relics of French royalty and believed to have healing powers), which he smuggles out of France for safekeeping until the monarchy is restored.