Off My Rocker

Recommendations from a Book Nut

Sheriffs (March 2004)

Who would take an ax to a harmless elderly lady? Part-time musician and sometime sheriff’s deputy Gabriel DuPre, a Metis (mixed Indian and White heritage) Indian intends to find out.

When he stakes out the old lady’s house and runs off two teenagers discovered lurking in the vicinity, he is knocked unconscious. Later fire breaks out in the mountains and the bodies of the boys are found, badly burned, in a culvert. Du Pre calls on both halves of his heritage for help in solving these mysteries.

Bowen’s works are always interesting for his explorations of Metis culture, and, for those who like these things, there is a touch of the supernatural and Native American mysticism.

DEAD MOON ON THE RISE, by Susan Rogers Cooper

Life looks good to Undersheriff Milt Kovak – he’s just gotten married, his little sister and her brood have vacated his home, he’s running unopposed for Sheriff, and nothing dreadful is happening on the crime front.

Then an old co-worker, the charming and popular Wade Moon, shows up and runs against him. This is slightly alarming. Even more alarming is finding out that Moon’s corpse has been found in a lake with its head bashed in. So far it looks as if Milt had the most to gain by Moon’s demise. Poor old Milt…

DEATH BY ACCIDENT, by Bill Crider

I am particularly fond of the character, Dan Rhodes. He’s a small town Texas sheriff who’s reluctant to pull a gun. He’s not a coward, he just seems to genuinely like most of the folks in his service area – and he remembers that sheriff-ing is a service and not a power trip. He’s a nice guy who patiently (more or less) puts up with a staff who like to string him along and who compete to tell him what’s going on in the community in the longest, most round-about way possible.

In this title he has to deal with a body floating in a swimming pool, a man who blows up while carrying a can of gasoline across a field, and two local historical societies which are at each other’s throats.

HEARTSHOT, by Steven Havill

At sixty-plus Undersheriff Bill Gastner of Posadas county is still on the job despite a rapidly expanding gut, a touch of arthritis, and the none-too-subtle efforts of his boss, Sheriff Martin Holman to retire him. When a fatal car crash leaves five teenagers dead, with $150,000 worth of cocaine in the car, Gastner must use all his accumulated knowledge and wisdom, and compassion to detect who the mastermind is behind Posadas County’s drug problem.