Murder in Four Parts

December 15, 2008
Sheriff Dan Rhodes claims he can't join the Clearview Community Barbershop Chorus because he's too busy “busting crime twenty-four hours a day” in Crider's wryly humorous if somewhat sleepy 16th sleuthathon (after 2008's Of All Sad Words
). Chief among those crimes is the murder of Lloyd Berry, the chorus director and local florist, whose head somebody bashed in with a pipe cutter wrench. Also causing the Texas lawman considerable consternation is locating the owner of a chicken-eating alligator, calming down two feuding neighbors and dissecting the cause of the chorus's internal strife. Then there's the nude bozo doing jumping jacks in front of what Rhodes calls the Lawj Mahal, the big new law offices of the county's most successful attorney. Trying to solve the various puzzles leads Rhodes into some less than agreeable situations, like pulling a Charles Bronson—chasing a bad guy on top of a moving train—at the mystery's satisfying climax.

February 15, 2009
On a given day, Sheriff Dan Rhodes of Clearview, Texas, deals with neighbors feuding over noisy chickens, a hint of gambling at a local pinball joint, an alligator trapped in a ditch, and the Heckle-and-Jeckle repartee between his jailer and his dispatcher. But then nice guy Lloyd Berry, who runs the local flower shop, gets his head bashed in, and Rhodes has some genuine police work to do. It wasnt robbery; the register was full. A dispute with one of the other shopkeepers in the strip mall? Doubtful. A conflict among members of the local barbershop quartet, of which Berry was a member? Thats a theory Rhodes believes has promise. As Rhodes investigates, he exposes many idiosyncrasies of small-town life: petty feuds with no remembered origin; rampant rumor and insinuation; and, of course, abiding friendship. Rhodes is a keen, wryly observant and nonjudgmental investigator. He sees the humor as well as the pain in the lives we leada combination that makes for an entertaining entry in a very likable series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)