Gold Dust

June 11, 2018
In Wortham’s entertaining, well-crafted seventh Red River mystery set in late 1960s Center Springs, Tex. (after 2016’s Unravelled), two CIA agents persuade a local crop duster to spray an unknown substance that they call Gold Dust. They claim it’s to test weather patterns, but Constable Ned Parker and his old friend Tom Bell, a retired Texas Ranger, believe the spray may be spreading illness. Meanwhile, Sheriff Cody Parker and his deputies investigate a rancher’s murder that could be related. And Ned’s 14-year-old granddaughter, Pepper Parker, starts a rumor about buried treasure that sparks a gold rush in the area. Ned and Tom pursue the CIA operatives to Washington, D.C., in their quest for justice. Their triumph may be farfetched, but it’s a pleasure to watch them deal with orneriness as well as just plain evil. Readers nostalgic for this period—songs by the Monkees and Tommy James and the Shondells blast from transistor radios—will find plenty to like. Agent: Anne Hawkins, John Hawkins & Assoc.

July 1, 2018
The seventh of Wortham's Red River mysteries brings a pair of sinister intruders into Center Springs, Texas, in 1969 to launch a crime so monstrous that two of the town's patriarchs will have to travel far from home to avenge it.Pilot Curtis Gaines has been hired to spray water filled with what a pair of government agents calling themselves Mr. Brown and Mr. Green tell him is water infused with "microscopic metal particles our scientists call 'Gold Dust' " over Lamar County. In fact, the Gold Dust is actually a combination of bacillus globigii and bacillus subtilis. Though it's thought to be harmless, it actually has a toxic effect on anybody frail and elderly, like centenarian elevator operator Jules Benton, or anybody with asthma, like Constable Ned Parker's teenage grandson Top, or anybody whose system has been weakened by a recent surgery, like Curtis himself. Apart from the sudden outbreak of mysterious illnesses, Ned, along with Deputy Anna Sloan and retired Texas Ranger Tom Bell, recently returned from a sojourn in Mexico thought to have left him dead, has to contend with a pair of murderous cattle rustlers and the rumor, spitefully initiated by Top's nearly identical female cousin, Pepper, that there's a treasure in gold buried close by. While Wortham (Unraveled, 2016, etc.) is still introducing more relatives and hangers-on to the Parkers in Center Springs, Ned, infuriated as his grandson hovers near death, decides to go directly to the CIA in Washington to get vengeance. Tom joins him on the 1,200-mile drive and the unlikely game of polecat-and-mouse that unfolds in a series of developments as preposterous as they are richly enjoyable.The result reads like a stranger-than-strange collaboration between Lee Child, handling the assault on the CIA with baleful directness, and Steven F. Havill, genially reporting on the regulars back home.

COPYRIGHT(2018) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

September 1, 2018
Center Springs, Texas. The late 1960s. The CIA hires a crop duster to spray a new bioweapon, in what was intended to be a controlled test to determine its effectiveness. Well, it certainly was effective, though the test was not well controlled: the bioweapon, called Gold Dust, caused a lot of people to get sick, with some even dying. Constable Ned Parker and Tom Bell, a former Texas Ranger, storm off to Washington, D.C., to get some answers?especially since Ned's grandson, Top, is now deathly ill, thanks to the CIA. Reading the seventh Red River Mystery is like coming home after a vacation: we're reuniting with old friends, returning to a comfortable place. Wortham's writing style is easygoing, relying on natural-sounding dialogue and vivid descriptions to give us the feeling that this story could well have taken place. Another fine entry in a mystery series that deserves more attention.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)