A Linda Wallheim Mystery Series

In the wake of the #MeToo movement, has it become easier to speak out about sexual assault in religious communities?

Linda Wallheim, increasingly disillusioned with her Mormon religion, has begun marriage counseling with her husband, Kurt, a bishop in the Latter-Day Saints Church. On other days, Linda occupies herself with happier things, like visiting her five grown sons and their families.

When Linda’s eldest son, Joseph, tells her his infant daughter’s babysitter, a local teenager named Sabrina Jensen, has vanished, Linda can’t help but ask questions. Her casual inquiries form the portrait of a girl under extreme pressure from her parents to be the perfect Mormon daughter, and it eventually emerges that Sabrina is the victim of a terrible crime at the hands of her own classmates—including the high school’s golden boys and future church leaders.

Linda’s search for Sabrina will lead her to the darker streets of Utah and cause her to question whether the Mormon community’s most privileged and powerful will be called to task for past sins.

The fourth installment in Mette Ivie Harrison’s nationally bestselling Linda Wallheim mystery series, set in Mormon Utah, explores the effects of alienation, immigration, and extortion from the inner workings of the Mormon church.


Draper, Utah: Now that all five of her sons have left home, Mormon bishop’s wife Linda Wallheim has quite a bit of time on her hands. She has befriended Gwen Ferris, a woman in her ward who is quickly losing faith in the church. Gwen has a calling in Draper’s local “Spanish ward,” which is made up of both legal and undocumented immigrants who Gwen feels don’t always get the support they need from their bishop.

When Gabriela Gonzalez, an undocumented mother of three, is found strangled at a gas station, Gwen decides the police aren’t doing enough and decides to track down the killer herself. Fearing for her young friend’s safety, Linda reluctantly joins her, but what they find during their vigilante investigation may put them both in danger.

The Mormon church may have disavowed the polygamy it became so infamous for in the 19th century, but for some Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints, “plural marriage” isn’t just ancient history.

Mormon bishop’s wife Linda Wallheim couldn’t be more surprised to learn that her son Kenneth is engaged. Kenneth has left the Mormon church, and met his fiancée, med student Naomi Carter, at a “Mormons Anonymous” meeting. Naomi was also raised Mormon—but her family belongs to a group that practices polygamy. Naomi’s father, Stephen, invites the Wallheims to visit the family compound. Though Stephen and his five wives seem to live normal, modern lives, Linda can’t shake the feeling that the family dynamics are off. When tensions on the compound escalate to murder, Linda delves into the many Carter family secrets to find the killer.

In the follow-up to the controversial and critically acclaimed mystery The Bishop’s Wife, Mormon housewife Linda Wallheim finds herself ruffling feathers in Draper, Utah, as she assists a murder investigation that is being derailed by transphobia within the LDS community.

In Draper, Utah, a tight-knit Mormon community is thrown into upheaval when their ward’s second counselor—one of the bishop’s right-hand men—is found dead in an elaborately staged murder on church property. Carl Ashby was known as a devout Mormon, a pillar of the community, and a loving husband and father. Who would want him dead?

Linda Wallheim, the wife of the ward’s bishop, can’t rest as long as the ward is suffering. She is particularly worried about Carl’s grieving family. But the entire case is turned upside down by the autopsy report, which reveals Carl Ashby was a biological female. In the Mormon church, where gender is considered part of a person’s soul, some people regard transgenderism as one of the worst possible sins. Church officials seem to be more upset by Carl’s gender than by his murder, and more concerned with hushing up the story than solving the crime.

Linda realizes that if the police are to catch the killer, they are going to need an ally on the inside—and she is the only one who can help. Carl was living a life of secrecy for twenty years. What else was he hiding—and can Linda ferret out the key to his death before the rumors tear her community apart?

In the predominantly mormon city of Draper, Utah, some seemingly perfect families have deadly secrets.
 
Linda Wallheim is a devout Mormon, mother of five boys and wife of a bishop. But Linda’s daily routine of church-going, Relief Society meetings, and visiting church ward members is turned upside down as a disturbing situation takes shape in her seemingly idyllic neighborhood. Young wife and mother Carrie Helm has disappeared. Carrie’s husband, Jared, claims that she has abandoned the family, but Linda doesn’t trust him. As she snoops, trying to learn more about the Helms’ circumstances, Linda becomes convinced Jared murdered his wife and painted himself as a wronged husband. 
 
Inspired by a chilling true crime and written by a practicing Mormon, The Bishop’s Wife is both a fascinating peek into the lives of modern Mormons and a grim and cunningly twisted mystery.