Steve Hockensmith, The Double-A Western Detective Agency: A Holmes on the Range Mystery

Steve Hockensmith, The Double-A Western Detective Agency: A Holmes on the Range Mystery
© 2018 Steve Hockensmith
ISBI 978-1-7905-516161


Steve Hockensmith’s The Homes on the Range series just might be my favorite on-going mystery series.  I think the continuing characters, especially Otto (Big Red) Amlingmeyer) and his brother Gustav (Old Red), are becoming favorites.  The narrative voice (Otto’s) is sharp (and sometimes discursive), funny, and altogether engaging.  And this entry (the 6th novel in the series) is just excellent.


The boys have, they (well, Gustav; Otto might retain some lingering doubts) hope, left behind their days as cowhands, and their more recent association with the Santa Fe Railroad police division, to become partners in the AA Western Detective Agency (headquarters in Ogden, Utah) with ex-Colonel C. Kermit Crowe and his adopted daughter Diana.  After six months of looking for, and not finding, clients, they have a case!  Clayton Haney, owner of a cattle ranch in the New Mexico Territory, has hired the agency to help solve a rustling problem.  And so Big Red, Old Red, and Diana are off, by train and coach.


When they arrive at the town of DeBarge, they notice, almost immediately, something very strange about the town—the businesses on one side of the (only) street are duplicated by stores with apparently identical products directly across the street.  A fact that will soon be explained.  The explanation comes when, while Otto and Gustav and Diana are talking with the town Marshal, Alfred Hinkle, he receives an urgent summons to break up a fracas at the DeBarge General Store (F. Martinez, Proprietor—just across the street from DeBarge Mercantile and Sundries (M. Baker Proprietor).  The AA crew tags along, and the Marshal rapidly buts an end(if only temporarily) to the hostilities.  And it transpires that the men causing the troubles are in the employ of Clayton Haney.

Things become more complex very quickly, the Marshal is found and Haney gets jettisoned as a client, the Sweeny clan (putative rustlers) become the new clients.  

And a pair of mysterious strangers—a Mescalero Apache and a hard-to-classify (Otto can’t get a good look at him—appear, and seem to be trying to run the Amlingmeyers out of the territory.  Yet another mysterious stranger, a Mr. Burr—who admits to being roving gambler—shows up.  


So the situation is complex, and made more difficulty by ethnic antagonisms.  But Gustav, applying the methods of (of course) Sherlock Holmes, moves steadily, albeit not directly, and with setbacks, to the solution.


Hockensmith has created an engaging cast of characters, all with strong and well-defined personalities.  The dialogue is sharp, the settings add a great deal to the story.  All in all, this is a highly successful mystery.  I look forward to the next entry in the series, which, with luck and if we’re all good girls and boys, will arrive with a shorter hiatus.