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The mysterious landscape of the Bonneville Salt Flats provides the backdrop for Andrew Hunt's "Desolation Flats," his third Salt Lake City murder mystery set in the 1930s and featuring the next chapter for idealistic Salt Lake detective Art Oveson.

Hunt, a University of Utah graduate who is a history professor at Canada's University of Waterloo, was fascinated by accounts of Malcolm Campbell, a British speed racer who set records in The Bluebird, a Rolls Royce with a V-12 engine. Campbell, who was knighted for his racing feats, flirted with fascist beliefs for a time.

"I love the idea of the late 1930s as a historical moment where anything could have happened," says Hunt, who recently returned to Salt Lake City to read from "Desolation Flats." "In 1938, the Second World War hasn't happened yet, but tensions are bubbling to the surface. That's one of the time periods I find so intriguing, as there's this sense of not really knowing, and that the world could go in any direction."

Campbell's story provided grist for Hunt's imagination as he created the fictional character of Clive Underhill, a wealthy British celebrity who goes missing while in Utah for speed racing trials. Oveson, a young Mormon father of three, now working in the Salt Lake Police's missing-persons bureau, is assigned to investigate the disappearance and learns that Underhill is intrigued by the mysterious disappearance of poet Everett Ruess. Oveson's work is complicated when his older brother, who works for the FBI, pulls rank and attempts to strong-arm the investigation away from the cops.

Then there's the fact that Oveson's former partner, the colorful Roscoe Lund, has been hired to provide security for Underhill, and then is arrested for the murder of the racer's brother. Another strand of the colorful plot concerns the competitive force of a German racer with a mysterious past.

This new Oveson chapter is the third in Hunt's mystery series (which includes his 2012 Tony Hillerman Prize-winning "City of Saints" and 2015's "A Killing in Zion"), all inspired by real 1930s Salt Lake City cases and locations.

Utah readers should be interested in his descriptions of the lavish Coconut Grove Ballroom on Main Street, which in the 1930s was the country's largest dance hall; the teetotaling Oveson's favorite hangout, Keeley's Ice Cream Parlor; as well as the old Public Safety building and jail on State Street. Also mentioned is the Old Mill Club, once a thriving open-air dance hall at the mouth of Big Cottonwood Canyon.

In his earlier Oveson books, the young police detective was a bit more of an earnest Boy Scout, Hunt says, while in this story he is forced to face off against the darker side of Salt Lake City history.

Early reviews have been "unusually strong," says Steve Ross, Hunt's agent, who calls him a "very talented novelist who keeps improving with each manuscript." The story has drawn interest from several publishing companies.

The plot is wild enough to satisfy action lovers, writes Booklist reviewer Dan Crinklaw. "The real magic here, though, is the author's ability to make this ordinary man so fascinating. Oveson ends his day with a mug of warm milk; he banters with his children; he consoles his troubled wife; and, through it all, we want still more of him. Credit Hunt's writing; like his hero, it's only plain on the surface."

As the decade has wound forward, Oveson has matured to become a cop more willing to break the rules, when it serves his ethical judgment. In his professional life, he begins to investigate a local cell of bigoted ex-cops, while at home he is forced to face complicated issues as his wife suffers from depression and their oldest daughter leaves behind her childhood faith.

When Oveson finds himself in harm's way, he comes in contact with his mortality and faces the death of his father.

While Hunt wrote most of the book more than 18 months ago, he's been fascinated with parallels from the novel's 1930s setting as he has watched the rhetoric of white nationalist groups through the U.S. presidential election.

He has been working on a new supernatural historical series, set at a fictional Ivy League university in the 1960s. But he hopes sales are strong enough for "Desolation Flats" that he'll have a chance to return to the maturing character of family man and detective Art Oveson.

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'Desolation Flats'

Andrew Hunt

Minotaur Books

Price • $26.99

Pages • 372

Also • Hunt will donate proceeds from book sales to the Utah Pride Center's transgender project in honor of his son, Maddox, 22 (born Madeline), who has undergone transgender therapy. "I'm so proud of him, as he's been so brave," Hunt says. "It has been a real growing experience for me."