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A year after Utah writer Mette Ivie Harrison launched "The Bishop's Wife," the Mormon mystery series set in Draper, she is back with the publication of "His Right Hand."

The series revolves around stubborn amateur detective Linda Wallheim, a mother of five boys and the wife of an LDS bishop. In "His Right Hand," the latest chapter of Wallheim's story, she and the rest of the ward are shocked when the bishopric's second counselor is found murdered at the church.

And then the plot provocatively thickens when an autopsy reveals the murdered man was secretly transgender. Nobody, including his wife and adopted children, claimed to know Carl Ashby had been born a woman.

It's just happenstance — especially well-timed happenstance for the writer and Soho, her New York-based publisher — that Harrison's novel is being published in The Year of Caitlyn and other headline-grabbing transgender stories.

"It's a topic I really believe in and I wanted people to think about more carefully," says Harrison, a prolific writer noted for her fantasy and young-adult novels before she turned to publishing adult fiction.

She had set out the arc for the entire series, drafting what she hopes will be 10 books, before the first novel was accepted for publication. "I don't want to write the books to please Mormons," she says. "I was worried that getting too many negative emails would get in my head."

Harrison's book might have gotten the most national attention, yet it's just one of a handful of recent nationally published mysteries that could be considered Mormon noir, or possibly Mormon noiresque. Each of these very different novels revolves around naive Mormon sleuths who set out to unravel mysteries.

Other examples are Andrew Hunt's "A Killing in Zion," his second historical murder mystery set in 1930s Salt Lake City; and Salt Lake City native Tim Wirkus' "City of Brick and Shadow," a literary thriller that follows two LDS missionaries in Latin America who track the disappearance of a mysterious recent convert.

Harrison, who lives in Layton, will launch "His Right Hand" at a reading Dec. 2 in Provo.

Hunt, a University of Utah graduate who teaches history at Canada's University of Waterloo, will read from his novel about an investigation into the murder of a polygamous leader on Dec. 10 at The King's English Bookshop.

Wirkus' book, which he drafted while earning his master's degree at Brigham Young University, was published in early 2014 and sold well enough to be reissued this fall in a paperback edition.

"Mormon writers are branching out," says Jana Riess, senior columnist for Religion News Service and the author of "Flunking Sainthood" and co-author of "Mormonism for Dummies." "Much of the genre growth we have had in Mormon letters has come in fantasy fiction, so it's encouraging to see this rise in Mormon-themed mystery novels."

When the Mormon backdrop is the point • Consider nationally known Mormon writers, and prolific science-fiction writers such as Orson Scott Card and Brandon Sanderson come to mind. Or any of Utah's best-selling crop of young-adult writers, ranging from Shannon Hale to James Dashner.

In many ways, some contemporary Mormon writers have implicitly explored religious concepts such as moral agency or priesthood power in their fictions, yet those religious subtexts are easy for some readers to ignore or miss, says Eric W. Jepson, a Mormon writer and reviewer who blogs for A Motley View.

What's different about this crop of murder mysteries is that the stories are aimed at national audiences and the Mormon cultural backdrop is the point.

"I think there's a real potential in the case of Mormon noir to explore this kind of discrepancy between the positive public face of something and a darker side to that same institution and culture and way of life," says Hunt, who was raised in Salt Lake City but isn't a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. "I think it's just a fascinating culture."

Finding the literary ambition in ambiguity • In some ways, according to Wirkus, LDS missionaries are already in the business of solving mysteries by providing narratives that attempt to answer such existential questions as: Who are you? Why are you here? And where are you going?

"I do think the mystery genre is especially good for engaging ambiguity," says the writer, a Salt Lake City native who is earning a Ph.D. at the University of Southern California. "That's one thing the genre brings to the table."

In many ways, Wirkus' "City of Brick and Shadow," which won the title of best novel in this year's Association of Mormon Letters competition, doesn't fit neatly into any genre.

It's a missionary story, set in an unnamed Latin American country, but there's little exposition about doctrine or belief. And regular readers of crime fiction might be unsettled by the fact that the novel doesn't offer a neat conclusion.

It's a story that successfully fuses its literary ambitions with genre fiction, thanks to beautiful writing and interesting characters that defy convention. "Richly intertextual, this mystery is able to participate in its genre without being wholly of it," AML judges said.

Instead, Wirkus says, he might call his novel fan fiction of the great Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges.

Finding fictional stories in history • None of these mysteries feature down-on-their luck, Humphrey Bogart-esque private investigators. In fact, Hunt's central character is Art Oveson, a young, naive but determined police detective, who in "A Killing in Zion" is assigned to solve the case of a slain polygamist.

Yet the writer plays with genre tropes in his description of clouds of ashes from wildfires that darken downtown Salt Lake City skies, and in his depiction of Roscoe Lund, the straitlaced detective's hard-living partner. Lund's drinking and womanizing contrast with the work ethic of Oveson, a teetotaling family man, who struggles to live up to the reputation of his martyred father.

For local readers, one pleasure of Hunt's mysteries is recognizing locations drawn from history. His first crime novel in the series, 2011's "City of Saints," told a fictional version of an intriguing 80-year-old cold case, the 1930 murder of Dorothy Dexter Moormeister, a wealthy Salt Lake City doctor's wife and social gadfly.

For his second book, Hunt "cherrypicked" details from the 1977 murder of polygamous leader Rulon C. Allred, a homeopathic physician who was killed at his Murray office. He changed the time period and fictionalized other details to create the 1934 murder of LeGrand Johnston, the head of the Fundamentalist Church of Saints.

As the book begins, Oveson is lauded in a true-crime radio show, "Crime Does Not Pay," for capturing the "Running Board Bandit" at South Temple's Brigham Street Pharmacy, an episode based on a real Salt Lake City 1933 crime, Hunt says.

Another interesting real-life location in the book is the house on Third Avenue where fundamental polygamists published a magazine called "Truth," which was among the locations raided by FBI agents in March 1944, according to a Tribune news report.

Finding the fiction in contemporary Mormonism • Harrison's novels are the most explicit in exploring contemporary issues in Mormon communities. "With 'Bishop's Wife,' you can't pretend it's not what it is, and I like that," says Jepson, the Mormon blogger and critic.

"Linda administers with brownies, not consecrated oil," Jepson writes in his review. "But breaking bread in communion is as Christlike a symbol there is, and Linda is able, through being gentle and mild (most of the time), to be with and understand people in ways perhaps her husband cannot."

The series centers on the impulsive Wallheim, who might draw comparisons to the mystery writer and amateur detective Jessica Fletcher that Angela Lansbury made famous in the 1980s TV series "Murder She Wrote."

Wallheim is an interesting — and possibly important — female character in the Mormon mystery canon precisely because of the way she is often underestimated. She doesn't have secular or ecclesiastical authority, yet she claims power for herself, says Christopher Lewis, an assistant professor of languages and literature at the University of Utah, who pays attention to Mormon fiction.

Outwardly, she appears to be a traditional Mormon, a believer who is often assigned by her husband to bake cinnamon rolls for ward members who are in need. Yet in her internal dialogue she questions everything, including gender roles, questions of sexual identity and how God answers prayers.

Beyond her Mormonism, Wallheim continually defies procedural conventions, such as when she rushes into a hostage situation or slugs a female murder suspect. In addition, she repeatedly messes up potential evidence, as if she had never watched an episode of TV's "Law and Order" or "CSI."

Harrison's editor praises the book's powerful, original ideas, "especially stuff about Mormon life that I hadn't read before," says Juliet Grames, associate publisher for Soho Books.

"One really neat thing Mette is bringing to the table as an author is that world-building that fantasy writers are trained in," Grames says. "If you're going epic in scope, you have to know what's happening in your character's life. Her fictional version of Draper is a real place that she lived in when she was writing."

Exploring religious topics explicitly in her fiction and in regular columns on Huffington Post has allowed Harrison to confront her own faith crisis, but she doesn't expect Mormons to read or particularly like the series.

She was surprised when "The Bishop's Wife" was named a finalist in the 2015 Utah Book Awards. "I suppose there are Mormons who like it, but I don't hear from them very often," she says. "I'm blunt about church doctrines and don't try to defend them."

That led to what Harrison refers to as last summer's "great unfriending" on her Facebook page, her effort to keep peace with friends and family who aren't interested in her portrayals of flawed Mormons or her writing about beliefs.

Her husband is among those who didn't particularly like "The Bishop's Wife," Harrison says. And the readers who have called upon her to make her central character more likable might be more disappointed as the series continues.

"People love her and hate her, which makes it a good book for book-club discussions," Grames says. While the New York-based publishing company doesn't reveal sales figures, she says the book has consistently sold well to crime-fiction readers and finding crossover success among religious and nonreligious readers.

Wallheim, the mother of five boys, is emotionally damaged due to the earlier death of an infant daughter, which sparks in her a pathological need to mother young women whom she thinks are in trouble, the writer says.

"There's a very specific place I am taking Linda to," Harrison says. "She is deeply broken, and you don't realize that in the first book. She's going to get into lots of trouble."

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'A Killing in Zion'

History professor-turned-crime writer Andrew Hunt will read from "A Killing in Zion," his second murder mystery set in 1930s Salt Lake City. The reading is free.

When • Thursday, Dec. 10, 7 p.m.

Where • The King's English Bookshop, 1511 S. 1500 East, Salt Lake City

'His Right Hand'

Layton writer Mette Ivie Harrison will launch her second book in her "The Bishop's Wife" Linda Wallheim series, "His Right Hand," with a free reading.

When • Wednesday, Dec. 2, 7 p.m.

Where • Room 309, Provo City Library, 550 N. University Ave., Provo