Natural Disaster Is Key Player in These Mysteries

Despite the heroic responses to hurricanes Harvey and Irma, it's a sad truth that the chaos created by natural disaster also unleashes and provides cover for human predators. So it's no surprise that mystery writers sometimes use a powerful natural menace--whether shaking earth, raging waters or roaring winds--to heighten suspense and complicate detection in their plots. For example, The Weatherman, by best-selling author Steve Thayer, is a collision of man-made and natural mayhem: Two tortured Vietnam vets, one a television meteorologist with an eerie gift for reading the weather and the other a news producer with a disfigured face, both love the same beautiful cop-turned-reporter. When fierce weather events coincide with murders, the meteorologist is accused, and the disfigured vet and lovely reporter join forces to investigate. In The Breathtaker by Alice Blanchard, a massive tornado strikes a small Oklahoma town and leaves behind three mutilated bodies in a ruined farmhouse. Police Chief Charlie Grover assumes the victims were impaled by flying debris, until evidence proves they were brutally murdered. Grover must enlist the aid of a tornado-chasing scientist to stalk a murderer who conspires with nature to conceal terrible crimes. The drama of Hurricane Katrina (plus a New Orleans setting) have inspired many fictional tales. Certainly, Hurricane by Jewell Parker Rhodes deftly weaves the region's natural and supernatural forces in her mystery plot. Dr. Marie Levant, great-great granddaughter of voodoo queen Marie Laveau, awakens from a nightmare, goes for a drive to clear her head, and finds a crime scene: a couple and their baby killed in the village of DeLaire. She reports the murders to the local deputy and sheriff, and meets the ailing Nana, a voodoo practitioner who's foreseen Marie's arrival. As Marie focuses on the local mystery, an approaching hurricane threatens wider death and destruction. Dead Man's Island, by Carolyn Hart, puts a very different sleuth in the eye of a hurricane: Henrietta O'Dwyer Collins, a widowed former reporter, is invited by an old beau, a media magnate, to his private island off the coast of South Carolina to help him figure out who is trying to kill him. As a monster hurricane hits the island, plot and storm naturally peak together. And if you're hungry for disaster thrills with a dash of romance, there's Chris Fey's Disaster Crimes Series, including Hurricane Crimes, Seismic Crimes, Tsunami Crimes, etc. For more options, see https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/45619.Natural_Disaster_Fiction