Does your local gas station now sport a chain link fence and a hole in the ground? It may be a victim of LUST, that's the Leaky Underground Storage Tank regulations, which mandated removal and replacement of tanks by December 1998. If you'd like an eye opening and opinionated look at the politics of implementing these regulations over the last decade, geologist turned private investigator Em Hansen and her cohorts in the mystery novel Mother Nature will give you plenty of food for thought.
Em has been hired by George Pinchon, the senior senator from California, to look into his daughter's death. Janet Pinchon, whose suspicious demise occurred the day after she was dismissed from HRC Environmental Consultants in Santa Rosa, had been digging up the facts on an unreported tank located on a property that some local politicians and developers are interested in, well, developing. Em decides that the best way to pursue her investigation is by putting herself in Janet's shoes, and gets herself hired on as Janet's replacement at HRC.
In the process of Em's sleuthing, we are provided with plenty of stereotypes of characters you're likely to encounter in environmental consulting in California. From civil engineers who "don't much understand what geologists do", to hydrogeologists ("not to be confused with geologists") viewed as "abstractionists run amok in a concrete universe", from principals in consulting firms who care more about their bottom line than their employees or the environmental regulations they are getting paid to implement, to county employees officiously monitoring the whole mess, cheerfully identifying violations, filling out forms, and billing struggling mom and pop store owners, we are presented with a picture of a world with a strong undercurrent of tensions ripe to explode. In her zeal to uncover the truth about a suspected contaminated site, could Janet have pushed one of these people just a little too far?
Well, I certainly can't reveal much more, but I can say that if you work or live with the politics of water quality and development in California, you'll enjoy reading this book. It's well written with an engaging main character, and besides, how can you pass up a mystery where the acknowledgments thank a hydrologist, and end with the intriguing remarks: "to certain parties who shall remain nameless, for being such horses patoots that they irked me into writing this story. And last but not least, I thank certain other parties who choose to remain nameless, for telling me where a few political bodies are buried". Maybe Paul Harvey will tell us the rest of the story.