Review: The Lightning Rod

The Lightning Rod by Brad Meltzer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The second in Meltzer's Zig and Nola series and I'm still not sure I like Nola, but will admit, she's pretty complex and seems to be getting a little less emotionally guarded. Zig is a mortician and has, for most of his career, worked at Dover Air Force base where most fallen military bodies are brought to be prepared for burial. He's considered an artist since he has performed miracles it would seem to make many of these wounded and damaged bodies whole enough to be viewed by families and friends with a minimum of despair at the trauma the fallen has suffered.
Nola--Nola is in the Army--she's an artist, too. Her job is to paint, sketch, draw military events and personnel at some of the most chaotic situations. She has suffered trauma too--primarily emotional and most in her childhood. She is self-contained, a loner with little empathy or social warmth or grace. As a young girl she save Zig's daughter from a disfiguring if not life threatening accident at Girl Scout camp. His daughter died at 12. He has a soft spot for Nola and since she always seems to get into dangerous situations, he finds himself either bailing her out or working with her.
In this story, a former colleague of Nola's has been murdered--she was in his crew during a operation called Grandma's Pantry and found him to be a good leader and mentor. She wants to know why he's dead. Zig has been appointed the one to prepare the man's body. There is a lot of mystery about why, least of which is that the guy is not full time active--he's National Guard --and is getting pretty elaborate treatment. When Nola shows up at the funeral, Zig knows there is a mystery to be solved and Nola is somehow involved. And off they go, into another convoluted case which brings some revealing facts about Nola--maybe she's not so bad--

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