Dark Places

July 27, 2015
Set in 1967, Wortham’s engaging fifth Red River mystery (after 2014’s Vengeance Is Mine) focuses on two cousins: aptly named Pepper Parker, the feisty 14-year-old granddaughter of Constable Ned Parker of Center Springs, Tex., and Top Parker, Ned’s grandson, who’s a little older than Pepper and is often mistaken for her twin. Bored with small-town life, Pepper decides to run away to California and manages to talk Cale Westlake, a boy she likes, into going with her. Ned and Pepper’s father get on the trail of the clueless hitchhikers, who run into scam artists, hippies, and bikers on their journey west. Meanwhile, a robbery by three town wastrels goes bad and two visiting strangers are killed, a crime that Sheriff Cody Parker and his new deputy, Anna Sloan, try to solve. Wortham nails the time period, the hardscrabble town, and the people, for whom family loyalties are paramount. Agent: Anne Hawkins, John Hawkins & Associates.

July 1, 2015
1967: a fifth trip back to Center Springs, Texas, focuses on one regular's attempt to bust out of the place for good. "Focuses" may not be the best word, since once all the cylinders start firing, Wortham interleaves four different stories. Pepper Parker, still recovering at 14 from the traumas visited on her by earlier installments (Vengeance Is Mine, 2014, etc.), yields to Baptist preacher's son Cale Westlake's suggestion that the two of them hit the road together, bound for San Francisco. Pepper's same-aged cousin, Top, tells his own story of missing her while he tries to stay out of the way of all the grown-ups looking for her and convinced that he knows where she's headed. Pepper's father, James Parker, and his own father, Constable Ned Parker, fan out along the winding road to California looking for the missing girl, making new friends and enemies at every turn. Anna Sloan, the new deputy Top's uncle, Sheriff Cody Parker, has brought from Houston, makes increasingly pointed inquiries about the hit-and-run death of inoffensive farmer Leland Hale. The first story, in which Pepper fights off both menacing bikers and the folks who rescue her from them as she chases the Summer of Love, is the one most deeply rooted in the period; the second is the one most obviously calculated to appeal to series fans; the third, tangling Ned with a Comanche who calls himself Crow, is the most eventful; the fourth packs the most mystery and, despite all indications, the biggest surprises. Once again, Wortham supplies something for everyone-especially fans of summer movies who love chase sequences so much that they don't care who's chasing whom.

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August 1, 2015

In the summer of 1967, everyone is headed to the Haight to wear some flowers in their hair, including Pepper. There is nothing to do in Center Springs, TX, and even 14-year-old Top, Pepper's cousin, wants out. On the night Pepper leaves, two businessmen are murdered and a local farmer is killed in a hit-and-run. Const. Ned Parker, Top's grandfather, heads out after Pepper, leaving Sheriff Cody Parker, Top's uncle, in charge of the investigations. Cody has hired a former Houston police detective to be his lead investigator. But no one in small-town Texas takes a lady investigator seriously, so Dep. Anna Sloan has to forge her own way to bring the bad guys to justice. VERDICT Replete with period details and a strong sense of place, this winning fifth series entry (after Vengeance Is Mine) is as much a coming-of-age story as crime fiction. This series is comparable to Rick Riordan's "Tres Navarre"or Joe Lansdale's "Hap Collins and Leonard Pine" books.

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