I read “Causing Chaos” with wild abandon and can’t get the plot out of my head. If
Ledford’s fourth book is the first for you, it stands alone like every great novel in a series should.
But if you’ve read the first three, then you’ll find that as good as the others are, they were all a
giant foreshadowing for what takes place in “Causing Chaos,” when they all coming crashing
together.
Once again, we are drawn into Inola ‘Hummingbird’ Walela’s world, the lone Cherokee
female on the Bryson City Police Department. As she recovers from the death of her partner and
physical and psychological damage, Inola prepares for her final week on the force. She will soon
join her boyfriend, Sheriff Stephen Hawk, as one of his deputies in the Swain County Sheriff’s
department.
Inola’s last week on the job implodes when her childhood friend, Paven Nahar, breaks
out of jail where he was charged with the disappearance and probable murder of his wife Shellie.
Previously a suspect in the disappearance of three local women, known as the Qualla Ghosts,
Nahar is ‘in the wind’ again. The tribe on the rez will protect him and so it is left to the one
person that knows him the best to head up the manhunt.
Convinced of Paven’s innocence in the disappearance of the Qualla Ghosts, Inola is sure
of his innocence in the current case. When it is revealed that a local art dealer, Vandra Gudren,
and her companion, Konrad, had been at Paven’s home the evening his wife vanished, Inola’s
investigation leads her along that path. Dragged further into the case by a revelation that a past,
personal attack may have been the precursor to the all the missing women, Inola closes out her
week determined to bring all the cases to a head, no matter the consequences.
A standing round of applause for this dynamite blast of a thriller. Bravo!
