Dakota (Andi Oliver Series #2) » (Unabridged)

Martha Grimes is one of the few authors left carrying on the British detective mystery tradition, and doing it well. Scotland Yard Superintendent Richard Jury and sidekick Melrose Plant continue to enthrall readers with their clever, darkly humorous crime-solving careers.

There is “suspense on every page”(Cleveland Plain Dealer) in this follow-up to Biting the Moon— now available in paperback.

In Martha Grimes's acclaimed novel Biting the Moon, amnesiac drifter Andi Oliver sought the one man who held the key to her past. Now, Andi continues from one small town to the next, surviving the dangerous expanse of the Western plains, until she finds her mission—and menace—in Dakota. Taking a job at Klavan's pig farming facility, Andi learns the gruesome truth of modern livestock management. As she begins to uncover the even darker secrets about Klavan's sister facility, Big Sun, a stranger from her past comes to the surface— demanding information of which Andi has no memory.

Publishers Weekly

Bestseller Grimes's compelling second novel to feature the enigmatic young woman who calls herself Andi Oliver (after 1999's Biting the Moon) begins with Andi, who's still unaware of her real name or her past, adrift in the Dakota badlands. After rescuing an abandoned donkey, Andi makes a temporary home for herself in the small town of Kingdom, where she soon creates a stir by standing up to some local bullies. She really begins to shake things up in the placid community, however, when she takes a job at a pig farm to try to save the cruelly treated animals bred there. After sneaking into the farm's affiliated assembly-line slaughterhouse, Andi resolves to find a way, within the bounds of the law or not, to call to account the management of both places for violating humane animal treatment laws. While one late plot development stretches credibility, Grimes succeeds in sustaining suspense while graphically portraying the ugliness of animal abuse. (Feb.)