Bill Gastner, the reluctant sheriff of Posadas County, New Mexico, anticipates his last few days in office will be uneventful. That is, until local teen Matt Baca drives drunkenly into the back of Gastner’s cruiser, then flees into the night. His eventual capture turns tragic when the boy becomes irrationally violent and takes a fatal tumble into oncoming traffic. Adding to the tragedy, Matt’s father is found dead in his tiny kitchen. Is this all a terrible coincidence, or is something more sinister afoot? The dead teen’s fake ID troubles Gastner. He suspects it’s why Matt Baca was so intent on avoiding arrest for drunken driving. His theory leads him to the toughest, deadliest couple of days of his career. This is a case that proves small town life can deliver big trouble. Still, Sheriff Gastner proves his mettle, and resolves it by using the common sense of an old warhorse, and the soothing powers of a green chile burrito.
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Creators
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Series
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Publisher
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Release date
January 21, 2005 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- File size: 345687 KB
- Duration: 12:00:10
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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AudioFile Magazine
Bill Gastner, the septuagenarian sheriff of Posadas County, New Mexico, is 72 hours from retirement and plagued by insomnia and the toughest, deadliest case of his career. A local teen is killed escaping from Gastner's police car, the teen's father dies in mysterious circumstances, and someone reports cattle rustling. Rusty Nelson's delivery is low-key and laconic as the story reveals clues as subtle as the faintest of winds brushing the vegetation along an empty highway. Nelson's rich, oftentimes conspiratorial narration is perfect for this sleepy border town where everyone is a genealogist and gazetteer of the highest order. K.A.T. (c) AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine -
Publisher's Weekly
October 29, 2001
Low-key and laconic to the point of being almost comatose, this latest mystery featuring immensely likable New Mexico Sheriff Bill Gastner (after 2000's Dead Weight) coasts admirably on its folksy charm for most of the rambling narrative. Unfortunately, crime fans with even the slightest taste for action are going to be fidgeting after the first hundred sluggish pages. Bill is days from retirement when Matt Baca, a local teen, drives drunkenly into the back of his police car. Other drunken kids, who are in the car with Matt, are unharmed. Matt takes off, but once caught simmers down. Then he becomes irrationally violent and escapes from custody, only to be hit and killed by an oncoming truck driving close to the edge of the road. The job of telling Matt's father, a career drunk named Sosimo, falls to Gastner the next morning. But that sad conversation never takes place. The boy's father is found dead, perhaps from a heart attack, though there are signs of a struggle in Sosimo's tiny kitchen. For 150 pages after the second death precious little else happens. Gastner's son shows up in a Corvette, the old cop ponders a second career as a livestock inspector in a location apparently rife with rustling, while the mystery of Matt's two state identification cards preys on his mind. One ID is real, and one is clearly a fake. At the close there's a neat conclusion to a case that has ambled along at its own pace, like rolling tumbleweed in a gentle wind. (Nov. 19)FYI:Poisoned Pen Press this fall is reissuing two earlier novels in the series,
Privileged to Kill and
Prolonged Exposure.
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