The Broken Saint

Seagate and Miner investigate the murder of Maricel Salizar, a young Filipino exchange student at Central Montana State. The most obvious suspect is the boyfriend, who happens to have gang connections. And then there’s Amber, a fellow student who’s obviously incensed at Maricel for a sexual indiscretion involving Amber’s boyfriend. But the evidence keeps leading Seagate and Miner back to the professor, an LDS bishop who hosted her in his dysfunctional home. Seagate takes it in stride that the professor can’t seem to tell the truth about his relationship with the victim, but her devout partner, Ryan Miner, believes that a high-ranking fellow Mormon who violates a sacred trust deserves special punishment. From the Author The Broken Saint is volume 3 in the Detectives Seagate and Miner Mystery series. Having broken Karen Seagate down to her most elemental level and begun to let her reassemble herself in Deviations, I chose to focus on her relationship with her partner, Ryan Miner, in The Broken Saint. Ryan's most essential characteristic is his devotion to the LDS church. For this reason, I created a plot that I hoped would force him to confront the conflict between his faith and his job as a detective. As it turns out, Karen Seagate's hard-headed cynicism makes her the better detective in this case involving a high-ranking LDS church member who appears to have violated some important teachings of the church--and perhaps committed a murder. It isn't that Karen Seagate is hostile to Mormonism. She simply sees it just another form of self-delusion, just any other flavor of Christianity or Judaism or Islam.