Sister Wife by John Gates
Walker and Company (July 2001)
Reviewed by Harriet Klausner, Midwest Book Reviews
All is well in Brigham Bybee's world. He proudly owns a private motel shaped like a teepee in Kanab, Utah. He is seriously involved with Zolene Swapp. He is also the outside prosecutor brought in to handle the Hampton Crowe bigamy case because Brigham is not a Mormon. The case is airtight as one of Pampton's wives is sequestered while waiting to testify against her husband. However, the case begins to unravel when another wife appears at Brigham's motel, badly battered. Crowe caught her sleeping with someone else. He and his men castrated and killed the male and beat up the female.
Brig realizes the case has taken a deadly twist and he hides the wife before Pampton finds and silences her. Behind the scenes, one of Brig's enemies wants to insure no murder trial occurs by legally tying the prosecutor with a series of phony charges.
Anyone who has visited Utah will have a difficult time accepting a cult as described by John Gates could exist there, but the gifted storyteller makes it so believable. Brig is a hero who adheres to his core values regardless of the difficulty that might cause a lesser person to compromise. He and a trip to Utah make SISTER WIFE an entertaining literary mystery.
