Survivors Will Be Shot Again

May 16, 2016
At the start of Crider’s entertaining 23rd Dan Rhodes mystery (after 2015’s Between the Living and the Dead), the Blacklin County, Tex., lawman, who’s enjoying a day off, deftly foils an armed robber at a convenience store by tossing him a loaf of bread. Rhodes’s day off comes to an end when Billy Bacon, a loan officer at a local bank, phones the police to report yet another theft at the B-Bar-B, his ranch. Other people in the vicinity of Billy’s spread have been robbed, including Melvin Hunt, who lost an expensive welding rig. Inside Billy’s barn, lying between two stacks of empty boxes, is a dead body, which Rhodes identifies as Melvin’s. But is Melvin the thief? It doesn’t make sense to Billy that Melvin would have stolen things from his own place. In addition to solving Melvin’s murder, the folksy and shrewd sheriff must deal with a host of other crimes, both major and minor, on the way to the satisfactory resolution of this inventive installment. Agent: Kim Lionetti, BookEnds.

June 1, 2016
A string of low-level burglaries plagues Blacklin County, Texas, spelling trouble for Sheriff Dan Rhodes and his deputies (Between the Living and the Dead, 2015, etc.) and two dead men.Ex-football star Billy Bacon, now a sedentary loan officer, has been robbed of a saddle and its stand. Melvin Hunt has lost a high-end welding rig. The neighbors have felt free to speculate why rancher Able Terrell has so far been immune from the thefts. The stakes rise, though not by all that much, when Rhodes, fresh from besting an armed convenience store robber by throwing a loaf of bread at him, responds to a call from Billy's ranch and ends up not only taking his report of the latest theft, but discovering the body of Melvin Hunt in Billy's barn, shot two times. The death is particularly awkward for Billy, who's just taken down a No Trespassing sign that warned, "TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT. SURVIVORS WILL BE SHOT AGAIN." He assures the sheriff that he knows nothing about Melvin's death--well, apart from having found the corpse himself before calling the authorities--or about the marijuana growing in one of his fields or about the alligator penned up nearby, presumably to guard the crop. As it turns out, Billy isn't the only local whose property has been partly turned over to the cultivation of cannabis, and Melvin isn't the only local who's due to be shot twice. Luckily, that alligator turns up in exactly the right time and place to make everything right again. The ambling plot makes room for a few sharp deductions and the usual mild humor--nothing to frighten the horses or raise fans' blood pressure.

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July 1, 2016

Sheriff Dan Rhodes is always busy, even in small-town Texas. There are stickups at the local convenience store, ranch robberies, and a corpse in Billy Bacon's barn. Another dead guy and an alligator guarding a marijuana patch down by Bacon's Creek are all the pieces Dan needs to solve the crimes. This marks the 23rd installment in the long-running series (after Between the Living and the Dead).

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2016
A dead man is found on farmland outside a little Texas town. Before Sheriff Dan Rhodes can get a handle on what happened, another corpse turns up, and the sheriff is so busy investigating he has to skip lunch. That happens a lot, he muses, and he wonders why all these missed meals haven't caused him to lose weight. As the pace picks up, Rhodes speculates that a hat would keep his bald patch from getting sunburned. This is the twentysomething offering in Crider's popular cozy-but-watch-out Rhodes series. Many cozy elements are here, like the supporting cast of eccentrics, including the fellow promoting ghost repellent, and the criminals who turn out to be part of the little community. But don't forget the watch-out part. Crider breaks the cozy mold after the halfway point, when murder, thievery, fraud, and drug trafficking turn the laid-back Rhodes into an action hero; the writing, typically flat as the landscape, catches fire. Rhodes, we see, can defeat alligators (go for the eyes) as well as spot clues. A winning series, much in the manner of Steven F. Havill's Posadas County mysteries.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)