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April 2, 2008
Geologist Pens Fourth “Hoo-dunit” in Award-Winning Mystery Series
Author Susan Cummins Miller digs out the truth in latest murder mystery, "Hoodoo."
Written by Barbara Brannon
"Hoodoo" is the fourth installment in the Frankie MacFarlane mystery series by Susan Cummins Miller.
The fictional sleuth Francisca (Frankie) MacFarlane can tell the difference between sandstone and soapstone at forty paces. She can read the landscape like a book, interpreting the faults, folds and formations of the earth’s surface with a scientist’s precision. And she has a way of finding out where the bodies are buried.
It’s no surprise that Frankie is the brainchild of field geologist Susan Cummins Miller of Tucson, Ariz., who has mined a nine-year career with the U.S. Geological Survey, the Minerals Management Service, and the Bureau of Land Management, as well as extensive teaching experience, for the materials of award-winning fiction.
“Quarry,” third in the series, garnered the 2007 New Mexico Book Award in its category. “Hoodoo” is the latest installment in the series published by the Texas Tech University Press.
“I chose to create a series protagonist who was a geologist, not only because I have the background and interest, but because geologists are innately curious people – born observers and naturalists – and because geology itself is detective work,” said Miller of her books’ origins.
In Miller’s murder mysteries – each of which embodies a geological multiple meaning in its title – landscape is a character, while history, anthropology and geology contribute plot elements and enhance the settings.
The action in “Death Assemblage” takes place in and around the fictional town of Pair-a-Dice, Nev. “Detachment Fault” is set in southeastern Arizona and Sonora, Mexico. In “Quarry” Frankie encounters murder and mayhem among the volcanic terrain and prehistoric sites of the Mojave Desert, Calif., “Hoodoo” finds Frankie among the volcanic rock formations of the Chiricahua Mountains that span southeastern Arizona and Southwestern New Mexico.
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About the Author
Susan Cummins Miller worked as a field geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey and taught geology and oceanography before turning to writing.
She is a research affiliate and SIROW Scholar with the University of Arizona’s Southwest Institute for Research on Women, and the editor of “A Sweet, Separate Intimacy: Women Writers of the American Frontier, 1800–1922,” published by Texas Tech University Press.
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