Pamela Clare and Investigative Journalism

Finished reading "The Naked Edge" a couple of weeks ago. It's the latest in Pamela Clare's I-team series that details the exploits of investigative journalists at a fictional Denver newspaper. It was a strong entry in the series. So many suspense novels have reports as protagonists, but they're not often done well. Clare is a former reporter herself and the books are extremely real, with a lot of great atmospheric detail about life in a newsroom. (I wonder how long this type of story will be viable, however, with digital media killing off the mainstream media at a rapid clip. Also as a side note, it's unbelievable what a huge pain in the butt the prevalence of cell phones is to a romantic suspense writer these days. It's really hard to come up with ways to put people in danger and make sure they don't have handy access to a cell phone to call the police.)

This novel features a modern-day Navajo heroine, also a rarity, since most romances with native protagonists tend to be historical. Clare did a great job of researching modern Navajo life, and the story has a compelling plot about the theft of Navajo artifacts, which are of great spiritual importance to the natives. The book also has a gutsy plot twist near the end that I didn't see coming: I won't be a spoiler but hats off to Pamela Clare for being unafraid of an imperfect hero.