CSI: Nevada Rose by Jerome Preisler

"Nevada Rose" is really a woman named Rose Demille, and she's a beautiful, well-known super sports fan who gets her jollies by being the significant other of men in sports. Unfortunately, she's now dead, somehow having been suffocated in her bed. But while she's tied hand and foot, there is no ligature or ligature marks, no sign that she's been manually strangled or aspirated vomit, so how exactly did she get strangled? Warrick and Catherine are on the job!

Meanwhile, a man's body is fished out of an artificial lake in Vegas, and he's green with a growth of Algae all over his face and the exposed parts of his body. Sara, Greg and Gil Grissom take this one. It's hard to identify the body, but he's wearing specialized gear. At first they think he might be some kind of manual laborer, but the stuff he wears is a bit more specialized than that- it's actually mining or prospecting gear.

The mountains all around Vegas are full of minerals, everything from Red Beryl or bixbite, gold, silver, and all sorts of other stones. It turns out that this man was Adam Belcher, a mineral prospector who worked with his brother, Charlie. They are kind of famous in the minerological world for the many rich deposits they found, including a new crystal of Pink Beryl, known as Morganite, named after financier J.P. Morgan. They found the largest crystal of Morganite ever found, of such a deep pink that they called it the "Nevada Rose".

Now, since there was a record rainstorm only a few weeks ago in the area, it's possible that Adam was drowned in a cave that he had been prospecting, and somehow washed down the mountain gulleys into the lake. But then how did the green algae, a kind not found in the lake and that usually grows in lightless conditions, get to grow on him? And what about the crab eggs found laid in his mouth, which also wouldn't have been able to happen in a flood? The answer may lie in Adam's family, his brother Charlie and their mother, Gloria.

Back on the other Nevada Rose case, Warrick and Catherine discover that Rose Demille's latest catch was the baseball player known as "Fireball", Mark Baker, a major-league pitcher who was her latest conquest. Not only was he out with her on the night she died, but one of his sports bags was found on her front lawn, the tag torn off in some bushes, as if he'd been running and lost it.

Soon, the media picks up on the story, and Baker's lawyer is trying to block their access to the information and DNA they need to help solve the case. Fortunately, Mark Baker doesn't seem to care what his lawyer thinks, and he pledges to help. They also find out that Rose was seeing another man at the same time, a plastic surgeon named Layton Samuels. Rose's best friend says her friend was actually in love with Layton Samuels, and wanted to break off her relationship with Fireball to live with him.

But there's a problem. The good Doctor is married, and professes to be very happy with and in love with his wife. He says he only saw Rose once, in a professional capacity, and while he might have bumped into her at parties and things, there was nothing between them. But Warrick and Catherine discover that Layton Samuels' wife Eleanor has filed for a legal separation from him back east- possibly to get around the scandal of a man famous for books on good relationships separating from his supposedly loving and beloved wife.

But why did Eleanor feel that she wanted out of the relationship? Did she discover that Layton was having an affair? And did she decide to end it for him by killing Rose Demille, or did Layton find a reason to kill the woman he apparently thought of as his "soul mate" himself?

This book was a delight to read: fast-moving, but with the gritty and gristly bits of information and detective (and forensic) work that delight fans of the show. Everyone gets their moment in the sun, from David, Doc Robbins autopsy tech, to the good Doctor himself and beyond. We have the usual team of lab techs and forensic investigators, so even the ones not involved in the specific cases, like Nick Stokes, get their moment to shine and be seen. Even David Hodges, the annoying trace expert.

The two cases are expertly interwoven, with interesting bits of true information dropped in so you can learn things- and since gemstones are a hobby and obsession of mine, well, this book was right up my alley. The characters flowed well, and it was just a delight to read.

If you are looking for more CSI action, don't hesitate to turn to this book, which will give you all that and the proverbial side of fries. Highly recommended.