The Necessary Murder of Nonie Blake

November 9, 2015
In Shames’s engrossing fifth Samuel Craddock mystery (after 2015’s A Deadly Affair at Bobtail Ridge), the return of Winona “Nonie” Blake, who was sent to an institution near Dallas 20 years earlier, at age 14, after she tried to hang her younger sister, has the town of Jarrett Creek, Tex., talking—especially when Nonie is soon after found dead. When Craddock, Jarrett Creek’s police chief, investigates, Nonie’s uncooperative relatives attempt to keep some mysterious family secret hidden. Maria Trevino, a brash young deputy sent from Houston, provides Craddock with valuable assistance and teaches the affable old lawman a thing or two about modern police work. The discovery that Nonie was released from the institution 10 years earlier, not recently as Craddock was assuming, raises the stakes. The authentic small-town ambiance, a cast of meticulously developed characters, and Craddock’s easygoing, first-person narrative should more than satisfy series fans. Agent: Janet Reid, FinePrint Literary Management.

November 1, 2015
A small-town Texas sheriff faces a most peculiar murder case. Retired police officer Samuel Craddock serves as Jarrett Creek's sheriff because the town's broke and can't afford to pay anyone else. Lately Jarrett Creek's been buzzing with the news that Nonie Blake, who's done 20 years in a mental institution since trying to hang her younger sister, is coming home. A few days after she arrives, Craddock gets a call from Charlotte Blake telling him that Nonie has drowned in a pond on the family ranch. The fact that Nonie's head has been bashed in by an unknown object tells Craddock that he's got a murder on his hands. The Blake family may have lived in the area for years, but they keep to themselves and apparently have enough money to prevent any of them from having to work. Nonie's mother, Adelaide, has her hands full caring for her husband, John, who has Parkinson's disease; their youngest son, Skeeter, who found the body, helps out with his father's care. The couple's other son, rodeo rider Billy, who saved Charlotte from being hanged, quickly returns home to support his family. Certain that the motive lies in the past, Craddock quickly learns that Nonie was a manipulative liar, a snoop, and maybe a blackmailer. The steady stream of misinformation he's fed tells Craddock that Nonie's not the only liar in the family. The most outrageous falsehood conceals the fact that Nonie was actually released from the institution 10 years ago. Craddock must dig deep into the past of the entire family before he discovers the shocking truth. Shames does it again, providing the wise, likable Craddock (A Deadly Affair at Bobtail Ridge, 2015, etc.) with yet another quirky mystery with a surprising ending.

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January 1, 2016

Jarrett Creek, TX, police chief Samuel Craddock is called to the Blake family ranch to investigate a murder. The victim had spent the past 20 years in a Dallas psychiatric hospital for attempting to kill her little sister. Once again Shames's mystery (after A Deadly Affair at Bobtail Ridge) engages the reader with well-developed characters and an ingenious plot.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 15, 2015
Samuel Craddock, police chief of a tidy little town in East Texas, would claim that he has no special detective skills, no dazzling powers of deduction. He just goes about this windblown land asking questions until the matter is cleared up. Here he must solve the murder of Winona Blake, a troubled woman just back from a mental institution. He interviews the family and suspects there's something they're not telling him, but has no idea what. A deputy fresh from the academy mocks his small-town sense that you can solve cases by doing nothing but talking to people. So Craddock confronts the twenty-first century, mastering computer searches and marveling that FedEx can get him documents overnight. It's this mix of technology and persistent questioning that solves the mystery, and it's the writer's skill that keeps us reading. There's a nervous tension under the surface of the everyday prose, born of Craddock's (undeserved) sense that he might not be quite up to this job. Small-town policing, strong on character, much like Steven F. Havill's Posadas County series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)