Book Review: The Arizona Triangle by Sydney Graves

Pushing forty and single, private investigator Jo Bailen has her life laid out exactly the way she wants it. Taking pictures of cheating spouses has long soured her on the idea of marriage, even if her own background hadn’t made her doubtful of the institution after her father died and her mother’s grief refused to make room for the little girl who was a constant reminder of loss. Nowadays, Jo is happy to spend long hours at her job, punctuated by the occasional date with a hot prospect of any gender, with little expectation of long-term interest.

When Jo’s boss drops a new case in her lap, however, Jo’s immediate instinct is to refuse. It’s a missing persons case, which is one of their agency’s bill-paying staples. But the woman in question is an adult who’s been gone for less than seventy-two hours. More crucially, she’s someone Jo grew up with in their parents’ Arizona artist’s colony.

Rose Delaney and her family were a godsend for lonely little Jo. Both girls were four years old when Rose’s mother Laura came out west after divorcing her Irish mobster husband. The girls were soon inseparable, even before Jo’s father died when they were eight. Going back to Delphi and the house where Jo had so many good memories growing up, especially given the circumstances of Rose being missing, is thus bittersweet:

I’d always loved this house. After my father died, when it was just my mother and me alone together in our incompatible grief, I spent as much time as I could over here, not only because Rose was my best friend, but also because a real family lived here, three siblings, two parents, a noisy, fun whirl of squabbles and dinners and shows in the foyer. Luckily, Rose seemed to love having me here, in fact, she never wanted me to leave. She and I leaned on each other so much as kids, two lonesome girls stuck in the high desert, both of us with distant mothers, missing beloved fathers, intractable singular personalities.

That all ended when the girls had a falling out as young teenagers, for reasons Jo still can’t completely fathom. She hasn’t had a real conversation with Rose since. Laura is convinced that something terrible has happened and is willing to pay Jo top dollar to find out what. Rose’s youngest brother Ben is of a similar view, though their middle brother Jason seems more concerned with making sure that his land deal to develop Delphi goes through than with his missing sister’s whereabouts.

As Jo investigates, she learns more about what Rose has been up to in recent years, not all of it good. A poet, musician, and teacher, Rose was recently let go from her job over scandalous behavior. She was also strongly opposed to Jason’s development schemes. But would any of that have led to her disappearing off of the face of the planet? Jo will soon learn that her childhood best friend kept terrible secrets and that death will follow in their wake.

I’m not gonna lie, as someone still deeply marked by intense childhood friendships (though, thankfully, I’m still friends with all the girls who are still alive) this book was right up my psychological alley in the way that it grapples with that exact kind of hollowing loss. Like myself and my friends, Jo is open to rapprochement. Rose, alas, is far less interested:

Only once as adults I tried to talk to her. It was at a Christmas party at the Rancho. We were in our early thirties by then, both grown-ups, but there we were, still skirting each other, still making sure our paths didn’t intersect. It felt flat-out stupid to me. After a few glasses of wine, I walked up to her and looked her in the eye and said, “Come on, Rose, we were just kids. Can we be friendly again?” Without a word, she walked away from me. I stared after her, stung. And that, as the saying goes, was that; I was damned if I was ever going to try again.

It’s hard not to sympathize with the sensible Jo as she tries to make sense of sensitive, imaginative Rose’s shambles of a life. As bodies begin showing up, I thought I had the whodunnit all figured out… until Rose’s very worst secret came to light. Shocking and bloody, the horrifying result of Rose’s wildness is anchored neatly in this story by Jo’s intelligence and relative stability. 

I’m hoping this really will be the start of a series featuring a self-aware, queer private investigator taking on the secrets of Arizona while navigating her own fraught personal life. Jo is a terrific heroine, and Sydney Graves knows how to write a taut thriller that delves deep into questions of identity and the underbelly of the every day, even as it explores the long-lasting impact of the past.