Search for a missing father

Celine Watkins is no Miss Marple, her age (68) and her ability to unravel mysteries being among the few similarities. The protagonist in Peter Heller's Celine is a tall, elegant, uppercrust woman who looks like she could be a former supermodel. Instead she's a private investigator specializing in reuniting families. It is a personal crusade for her, for she doesn't need the money. As a teenager she had a baby taken away from her. The whereabouts of her daughter is one mystery she has never been able to solve.

Now she is hired by Gabriela, whose father, a National Geographic photographer, disappeared in Yellowstone two decades earlier, supposedly the victim of a bear. But that explanation has always seemed fishy, and now Gabriela wants to learn the truth.

So Celine and Pete, her husband, head west to Yellowstone. This isn't ideal territory for Celine to operate in because of its high altitude. She was a heavy smoker for 30 years and suffers from emphysema. She carries oxygen with her for emergencies, of which there are plenty in the mountains.

The mystery deepens when it becomes apparent that a man, a former military sniper, is following them. If the missing man wasn't killed by a bear, did he run away to escape Gabriela's oppressive stepmother or, as the presence of the sniper suggests, is there something else going on?

Heller's frequent flashbacks filling in details about Celine's past soon get bothersome, interfering with the flow of the narrative. Still they give depth to the character and to the novel itself, so readers should just slow down and enjoy an unusual and exceptional mystery.