Hired by the Bureau of Land Management, Millie Whitehall travels to the harsh environment of northwest New Mexico’s high desert. Driving treacherous roads and avoiding rattlesnakes become the least of her worries. What Millie expects to be a peaceful summer turns into a chaotic hunt for a ruthless killer. Millie experiences the friction of working for the BLM through the characters she meets-a … secretive cowboy, friendly oil and gas hand, out-spoken environmentalist, foreign tourist, and a cheeky Navajo biologist. Some of these become allies, one ends up threatening her life.When autopsies reveal the seemingly unrelated deaths involve plants. Millie draws on her knowledge of ecology as she races to investigate the murderer-before she becomes the next victim.
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This book could be the seed of a new series of mysteries set in our beautiful Southwest.
A terrific read. It has a unique dialogue exposing us to the botanical indigenous plants of the high desert without compromising the flow of the mystery. How wonderful!
I love stories located in or near the high desert of the Four Points in Arizona.
I enjoy books that take place in the southwest and this was no exception. Although I found the main character a bit too naive, I enjoyed this story. Millie is fresh out of college and working for the BLM in New Mexico for the summer. While surveying cactus, she is caught up in 2 murders. Most of the characters are quite likable and the botany is interesting. The story has a steady pace and gives Millie some interaction outside of work. Hope this will become a series with further adventures for Millie and her friends and coworkers.
not only a cozy, but very informative on the local land.
A mystery set in New Mexico that introduces you to the world of cactus kidnapping (who knew) and the BLM. No one is an easy enemy. The people sometimes called “bureaucrats’ are professionals interested in doing their jobs well. The problems they face and how they solve feel like a glimpse into another world. I enjoyed learning about desert plants.
This book was fairly long and drawn out. The plot was okay, the botanical descriptions were spot on, the characters had potential. It just didn’t gel for me.
The Cactus Plot starts out calm and informative and builds to a crescendo when men turn up murdered. New Jersey botanist Millie Whitehall comes to grips with the wild and woolly west when she herself comes under threat as she tries to protect the rare endangered San Juan Cactus.
Ramakka’s words brilliantly and accurately capture the people, aura and landscape of the high desert in the Four Corners. Gas and oil interests and cactus rustlers collide with those protecting endangered plant and wildlife species.
Roberta Summers, author, Fatal Winds, Pele’s Realm and Into the West Anthology
This was an amazingly interesting book! I loved all of the information on vegetation in NM along with a very interesting mystery!
I really loved this book and the botanical perspective.
Would have been better if there wasn’t so much exposition. It was distracting enough that I wasn’t able to follow the plot which essentially got lost in the information. Lots of good information though….
The story is set in exactly the area where I have lived and worked for fifty years, so I found it more interesting than most other readers probably will. The author presents a great deal of information about the desert flora and geology of the region, with a murder
mystery overlaid on that outline, along with some description of Navajo culture.
As a former resident of New Mexico I found it very interesting and well written
Vicky Ramakka’s page-turner, The Cactus Plot does an excellent job at capturing the sense of place and people of Northwestern New Mexico.
Would love to read the sequel
The Cactus Plot, and heroine Millie Whitehall, are not to be missed. Millie is a gutsy young woman dedicated to her career and determined to discover who is stealing rare cacti from their unique New Mexico environment. Besides getting thoroughly involved in the story line of The Cactus Plot, I learned a lot about Northwestern New Mexico, how the BLM functions there, and about the native plants themselves. I hope Millie and the other great characters in this book have further adventures because I sure enjoyed this one!
The Cactus Plot has some of the feel of a Tony Hillerman with a solid description of the people and places of Northwest New Mexico. It also has the “insider information” of a Nevada Barr, though in this case it is the BLM instead of the NPS. If you don’t know anything about the BLM, it is one of the most important federal agencies in the west. Not overly technical, but enough to understand the challenges of operating the BLM. How do you make it possible for everyone to share public lands?
Millie Whitehall, a summer intern, is thrown into the middle of all this. But she learns to quickly adapt to this beautiful and harsh country as she becomes immersed in a murder investigation. Her knowledge of endangered plants becomes key to solving the mystery.
I won’t say more, so as not to give any spoilers, but I do want to say I hope this is the beginning of a series. I can see Millie really coming into her own as she learns to navigate the land, people, customs, and politics of this unique area.
Great whodunnit in the Four Corners
Vicki Ramakka has created a bunch of characters who jump right off the page. Millie Whitehall, the protagonist comes off as a real person. I know that somewhere she must really exist. I wouldn’t be surprised if she turns out to be Vicki Ramakka’s alter ego.
Vicki and I are in the same writers group. We meet every week and critique each others work. When she first started The Cactus Plot, she and I butted heads quite a lot on how the story should be written. Finally I decided to stop trying to write her book, and let her do it. That was one of the best decisions I ever made.
The Cactus Plot contains everything a good novel has to have to succeed-plot, of course, solid true to life characters, suspense and humor.
I’m an author and I consider myself pretty good. Nothing I have written can hold a candle to The Cactus Plot.
I look forward to the further adventures of Millie Whitehall.
Long live Millie Whitehall, botanist and sleuth. After Millie crosses the country in her rust bucket car for a summer job with the BLM in the Four Corners, she is challenged with a new culture, a desert landscape, and two murders. Millie is not only a good botanist, but a likeable character as she explores and learns (as we do with her) about the ecosystem of high desert plants. Very enjoyable. And the ending makes me hope for more mystery stories starring Millie.
Vicky Ramakka’s intriguing contemporary mystery novel, The Cactus Plot: Murder in the High Desert, takes place in northwest New Mexico.
Fresh from college, Millie Whitehall accepts a summer position as a biologist with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Millie’s job consists of plotting and categorizing high desert plant life in an area some consider barren wasteland. As Millie works in the field, she encounters some interesting characters: a cowboy supposedly looking for stray cattle, a German photographer, an oil rig worker, an eccentric environmentalist, and an Apache wildlife biologist.
Along the way, we learn the purpose and value of BLM land. The National Forest Service was awarded places rich with timber, the National Park Service the scenic areas, and BLM got the left-over land that nobody wanted. But now, BLM land is in high demand. The bureau is charged with managing public land for multiple use to include recreation, range, timber, minerals, watersheds, and the protection of historical and cultural areas. These facts set the stage with what would become a puzzling chain of events.
Two mysterious deaths occur that autopsies reveal involve plants. Millie is suddenly drawn into the murder investigations and it’s a race against time before she becomes the next victim. She learns that the people she has met aren’t necessarily what they first appeared to be.
The author vividly describes the high desert and its flowers, including rare cactus much sought after by poachers. The Cactus Plot is an intriguing mystery with an intricate plot.