"Sorcery Paintings" is mystery about Aboriginal sorcery, greedy mining companies, and corrupt politicians in the Northern Territories of Australia in 1983. The story opens with the murder of a sorcerer (Big Ed) as he completes a sorcery painting at Daberrk rock shelter. We learn that War-ua National Park has recently been established to preserve Aboriginal lands, but the government reserves the rights to mine uranium in the Park. The first area to be destroyed is the sacred Deaf Adder Dreaming Place near Wallaroo. UNECSO (United Nations Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization) engages our heroine (Shelly Kelley) and her colleague (Jean Montoya) to pose as rock art scholars while covertly investigating reports that Aboriginal sorcerers are killing mine workers. They team up Abo Joe, a derelict from Oenpelli, and travel to Nourlangie Rock, Jim Jim Falls, and the Ubirr Rock Shelter where victims have been found in association with the Breath Stealer, the Four Armed Fire Woman and the Flesh Eater. As the story unfolds a supreme court justice is found wired to a chair at the Wallaroo airport in a uranium-contaminated shack; the body of a prominent rock art specialist is discovered in a termite mound by a group of tourists; a UNECSO official and the environmental specialist from the mine are murdered in a bingle at Wildman Creek; a group of feather-covered sorcerers are seen enhancing their bones at Big Ed's funeral to avenge his murder; and Big Ed's apprentice is boned at a corroboree near Katherine by another sorcerer from Windjina Gorge. These seemingly unrelated events come together on Inyalak Hill in Arnhem Land as our heroine and her crew find themselves running for their lives with the mine superintendent who is being framed by a competing mining company.
About the Author: Duane Anderson was trained as a southwestern archaeologist at the University of Colorado-Boulder (PhD 1972). He spent 20 years in Iowa, serving as director of the Sanford Museum and Planetarium, and later as State Archaeologist of Iowa at the University of Iowa. He later served as executive director of the Dayton Museum of Natural History before taking the position of vice president at the School of American Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In 2000 Anderson became the director of the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture in Santa Fe. Anderson has published over a hundred papers and books in the fields of archaeology, ethnohistory, paleontology, and museum studies, and has received four awards for his non-fiction books. When he retired Anderson started writing fiction based on his travels and personal experiences. Anderson is currently a Fulbright Senior Scholar and a Research Associate at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe.