THE URANIUM DRIVE-IN (THE TOM AUSTIN MYSTERIES)

A newspaper publisher with a secret past tries to solve a local missing person case in Cagin’s novel.

Tom Austin was once known as Ken Hanley. Ken lived in Boston and worked as an up-and-coming journalist with the world at his fingertips. Then Ken blew up his life and moved to Naturita, Colorado, a town known for its past mining of uranium. Now Ken goes by the name Tom and is the owner and editor of the West End Forum. When local mechanic Ray Walker vanishes right before his daughter’s wedding, Tom looks into the case—for the sake of his newspaper and to sate his own curiosity. During his investigation, Tom learns that Ray is actually the illegitimate son of Dick Klein, “the richest man in the entire Four Corners,” whose fortune comes from uranium mining. Later, Sarah Walker—Ray’s wife—informs Tom that Ray may have run away with Anya, a woman who escaped from her abusive and meth-addicted husband. While leads abound for Tom—from Ray’s garage doubling as a meth lab to his possible affair—he is still no closer to solving Ray’s disappearance. Cagin combines the mining history of the region with detailed descriptions of the landscape, bringing the reader directly into an environment in which the natural world is beautiful and what is man-made feels desolate (“the long views of distant blue peaks and rocky red-hued canyons spiked with juniper and pinion…where abandoned cars sat rusting away on some ledge or precipice where they had landed after their driver had crashed them”). While the prose is strong, the story has some minor issues—Tom’s intense commitment to Sarah and involvement with her family feels a bit hurried. Additionally, religious polygamy is introduced almost out of nowhere late in the story, though it proves to be a major plot point. Still, this remains a highly captivating and evocative tale.

Magnificent scene-setting supports a thoughtful and (mostly) thrilling plot.