Gabe Utley
Created by Gary Stewart
Here's an original: the good ol' boy cowpoke as Mormon private eye. A lapsed Mormon, actually (although he's still on the books), GABE UTLEY was born in salinas, but grew up in Salt lake city, where he read The Hardy Boys books and saw "too many Gene Autry and Hopalong Cassidy westerns." He grew up in a small apartment over his uncle's store in Salt Lake City with his mother, with occasional visits from his wandering, ne'er do well father. At twelve, his mother died in a car crash, and his father wandered off for good. Gabe was handed from relative to relative for the next few years, but by the age of twenty, he'd had enough. He moved to NYC with a pal, had a few wild years, and then eventually settled down, got married, had kids, became a private detective, etc.
At the beginning of The Tenth Virgin, Gabe is recently divorced, after fifteen years of marriage, and missing his two daughters very much. So, when an old flame asks him to return to Salt Lake City and help her out with a problem, he jumps at the chance. By his second recorded adventure, 1986's The Zarahelma Vision, he's moved back permanently, and set up shop as a PI.
Gabe's a stubborn investigator, stubborn and secretive. He's been tagged as a "persistent bastard" and "tight as an owl's ass about what (he) knows." Hefavors jeans and cowboy boots, likes country and western and beer, not to mention massive quantities of coffee and even a good smoke now and then. And he's not above a little shit-kicking. Not exactly a model Mormon. In fact, Gabe's still got a ton of hangups about his Mormon background, an uncertainity that lifts this series up a notch or two.
there's also a weird sort of love/distrust/rivalry relationship going on with Mona McKinley, a half-Irish, half-Chicano reporter for The Desert News, the official Mormon newspaper. Mona's feisty and fiercely independent, and, like Gabe, not altogether impressed with the powers that be.
An impressive couple of books, offering a setting, and raising some questions about spirituality, that are rarely offered in detective fiction. Too bad only two books were ever published. Still, if your appetitie's been whetted, other Mormon PI's include Moroni Traveler and Jason Coulter, both better than average. Maybe it's the drinking water.
EVIDENCE
NOVELS