Minotaur/A Thomas Dunne Book/St. Martin’s Press, 2016
ISBN 978-1-250-07852-0
The 23rd entry in Crider’s Dan Rhodes series, and
as good an example of the series as you are likely to find. Which means it’s an extremely well-plotted,
fair-play mystery with a collection of realistic and interesting
characters. (One of the strengths of
this series is that even the bad guys are believable and often seem like fairly
sympathetic characters; in general, there’s no one you really dislike.)
We begin with Sheriff Rhodes foiling a robbery at the local
Pak-a-Sak convenience store, on his day off, and proceed to his going out—still
on his day off—to investigate a reported robbery on the property of Billy Bacon
(loan officer at the local bank, half-assed cattle rancher, and former local
high school football star). There is, as
it turns out, a cardboard sign in the back of Bacon’s pick-up that’s relevant,
and a body in the barn. The dead man, Melvin
Hunt, earned—scraped—a living doing welding jobs and any other work he could
pick up.
There are also small plots of marijuana scattered around the
vicinity, with a unique method of protecting them from disturbance.
The usual characters appear (Hack, the dispatcher, and
Lawton, the jailer, continue to make Rhodes’ job something of a trial; Jennifer
Loam’s on-line news service gets a boost from the investigation; and Seepy
Benton—math teacher, songwriter, ghost hunter, and, now, advocate for marijuana
legalization; deputies Ruth and Buddy) and it’s nice to see them. The subordinate characters (Hunt’s wife, her
sister, and her sister’s husband; Bacon himself and his wife—who has a medical
problem; Able Terrell and his separatist compound; Gene Gunnison) are well
conceived, well developed, and important parts of the story. And Hunt’s dogs (Gus-Gus and Jackie) behave like
real dogs, and also turn out to be important.
Rhodes muses somewhat more than usual on his growing-up
years, which I found interesting.
These books are sometimes considered to be somewhat “cozy,”
which I, to be honest, don’t entirely understand. Rhodes is a settled, well-adjusted person,
with a stable and, more than that, happy, home life. The recurring characters are either quirky or
interesting. But the murders are not
sugar-coated, there are real deaths of real people, and we see the results in
clear (and clear-eyed) fashion. The
investigations are carried out realistically and often place Rhodes in some jeopardy,
and he needs both his wits and his willingness to respond with force, to get
himself out of trouble. So while there’s
not a lot of blood-and-gore, these are books with a fairly substantial core, in
which real people die unpleasant deaths, in which a real cop pursues real
investigations (with risks that must be faced and overcome), and in which real
people, with whom we may have some sympathy, face the very real consequences of
their actions.
The books are very well written, very readable, but with
steel at their core. And I love them.
Thanks, Don!
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