The Word is Out

Murder mysteries use Colorado settings, issues

Posted in In the Press by People's Press on November 24, 2011

Allison Coil used to be a city girl until an airplane accident helped her re-evaluate her priorities. Now she lives a completely different sort of life. She tracks game, builds fires and lives in a cabin.

Coil, whom readers met in Antler Dust, is a self-sufficient hunting guide. In the first story, she investigated two murders in the Colorado Flat Tops Wilderness and discovered, as in the plot of any good murder mystery, that things weren’t as they seemed.

Murder has found her again in Denver author Mark Stevens’ second book, Buried by the Roan, which takes places west of the Flat Tops in Roan, Colo.

Stevens will be in Loveland on Saturday to sign copies of his books.

Stevens used a couple of real-life incidents to form the conflict of his story.

He read in a Denver newspaper in 2007 about a controversial technique called “fracking” in which chemicals and water are jammed down into rock to release gas so it can be readily brought to the surface.

Problems arise when the gas leaks into well water or is too close to neighboring homes. A documentary, “Gasland,” has made the rounds about the issue. “This seemed like a great possible ignition for a story. If you have a conflict, you can start there,” Stevens said.

Stevens also saw a Boulder County dispute unfold over an “adverse possession” case. An old statute says that if a person has been using part of a neighbor’s property for 18 or more years, he can go to court and legally claim it. “It’s a holdover from the Old West,” Stevens said.

He used these “very Colorado” issues and decided that Allison Coil had to get involved.

When Coil sets up camp before going to join the hunters she’s guiding, she hears a branch snap in a supposedly empty field. She checks it out and finds a Colorado Rockies baseball cap sitting all alone.

Later, one of her hunters goes missing and ends up dead, apparently after a drunken night out and the resulting hypothermia. Of course, there’s more to it than that.

Two neighbors feud over property and natural gas, and some of her campers are getting really sick from the water. She gets help from a man named Devo, a survivalist who lives off the land and believes everyone should devolve and get back to their roots, and things are off and running.

“We’ve gotten very narrow in our skills,” Stevens said about the belief Devo has that it’s important to know how to survive in the wilderness. Devo is a fan of Coil’s because she, like he, made a change from city to outdoors.

Stevens hopes to publish his third book about Allison Coil in the spring of 2013. “Colorado readers in general seem to love mystery,” Stevens said. “And readers who like reading about stuff in their backyard seem to gravitate toward my books.”

Stevens lives in Denver with his wife and two daughters.

Jessica Benes can be reached at 669-5050, ext. 530, or .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

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