Falling Into Green is billed as an “eco-mystery” and features Esmerelda (aka Emerald) Green, an ecopsychologist who uses horse-back riding, among other techniques, as patient therapy. Esmerelda quotes a report that says: “Ecopsychology acknowledges the environment as an important part of the human psyche.” Indeed, there are environmental concerns woven throughout both the mystery and the lifestyle of the protagonist.

I had a hard time liking Esmerelda (‘Ez’) Green. She comes across as a self-righteous fanatic about environmental issues. Her reasoning seems faulty to me.

Wondering why materialism has come to mean the same thing as beauty. I realized that if the idea of beauty is also connected to health, and subsequently cancer, we may all be jumping off a cliff. Really. How can we expect to survive if our health is connected to a beauty that seeks to find itself in the money derived from polluting ourselves?

Huh? How did we get from materialism to cancer?

Don’t get me wrong – I ‘m concerned about the planet too. I recycle, compost, hang my clothes to dry six months of the year, heat with wood instead of fossil fuels, and buy natural fabrics when I can. I drive a small car albeit not an electric one, I support wind power projects, buy locally when I can, and reuse rather than buy new if possible. But Ez rubs me the wrong way. She doesn’t seem to realize that there’s always more that all of us can do – her included, and that there are no easy answers to the issues facing the environment. Ez’s old couch with the ‘organic stitching’ just doesn’t impress me.

Note: Falling into Green is written in the first person simple present tense. This is no doubt a matter of personal taste, but I found this irritating, especially when it deteriorated into what seemed like stream-of-consciousness. This was especially the case when Ez goes into a trance (“fusing” with her horse, or hearing her dead mother talking through the jacaranda tree in her backyard).

The mystery hidden in all this judgemental posturing is actually decent. Ez is drawn into the current death of a young woman at the same cliff where her childhood friend killed herself 15 years earlier. She finds the two deaths to be related, and in doing so uncovers an environmentally sinister past & present of a local manufacturer. I think a couple of the main characters (the villains) seem over-drawn but I suppose that’s the price to pay for a plot of global proportions.

According to the author bio “Fischer has long been involved in environmental issues and is passionate about the green movement in the United States.” I would have been surprised to hear otherwise: she has an axe to grind and is trying to hit us over the head with that axe through her fiction.

3 stars for the solid mystery. I won this ebook format from Library Thing Early Reviewers.