Red Dog

June 13, 2016
In Miller’s funny follow-up to 2015’s Down Don’t Bother Me, two suspicious characters, Sheldon Cleaves and his grown son, A. Evan, ask Slim, of Redneck Investigations, to find Shelby Ann Cleaves, who turns out to be a pit bull puppy. Cleaves knows that Dennis Reach, who runs a roadhouse in Little Egypt, Ill., took the dog and offers Slim $65 to retrieve her. At the urging of Anci, Slim’s 13-year-old detective fiction–loving daughter, he accepts. Slim succeeds in retrieving Shelby Ann from Reach. But when someone shoots Reach dead with a Colt rifle and Sheriff R.L. Lindley suspect Slim, Slim starts looking for answers. Aided by the spunky Anci, Slim pursues a trail that leads him to Reach’s well-armed ex-wife, Carol Ray Reach; a white supremacist group; J.T. Black, a meth partner of Reach; and a dogfighting ring. Slim cracks wise, gives and takes beatings and insults, and gets just enough help to survive in this tale sure to please fans of light regional mysteries. Agent: Anthony Mattero, Foundry Literary + Media.

August 1, 2016

Slim, along with his precocious daughter Anci, lives in southern Illinois's coal country, a gothic region known as Little Egypt. Now a private detective, Slim started out in the mines that have now played out, leaving the area mired in poverty and depression. Slim is hired to find a stolen red pit bull puppy, but as he tracks down the pooch, he gets entangled in a spider's web of illegal dog fighting, murder, and white supremacists. And that's before the FBI gets involved. Slim and his bad-to-the-bone partner Jeep Mabry end up being hunted by the good and bad guys alike. VERDICT This second series outing (after Down Don't Bother Me) is a seamlessly plotted mystery with a likable hero in a gritty world populated by meth heads, environmental activists, militias, and ordinary folks just trying to make a go of it. Tim Cockey admirers and Robert Crais fans who crave laugh-out-loud dialog will add this title to their to-read lists.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2016
Everything happened because the air conditioner went out, and summer in the southern Illinois coal country can be murder. Slim, the one-named former mine worker and amateur detective, would be happy joining his 14-year-old daughter, Anci, in studying and dissing Sherlock Holmes: He spends half his time showing off. They smell a rat when two unappetizingly eccentric fellows offer a lot of money to find a lost red dog, but it's too damned hot to be picky. The quest leads Slim into a world of arson and murder, robot-like white supremacists, and harrowing underground dogfights. Readers may find the narrative overpopulated and overcomplicated as it wends its way to a savage finale. But there is great pleasure in Miller's way with wordsdampness sat on the skin like a corpse's tongue. And hats off to a devilishly clever plot based on those odd marks on the dog's neck. Anci takes credit for the Holmesian ratiocination that helps solve the puzzle, while the last bloody pages display Slim's Holmesian lack of interest in the law. A nice mix of hard-boiled action and Holmes homage.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)