Tue 25 Feb 2020
PI Stories I’m Reading: REX BURNS “Dust Devil.”
Posted by Steve under Stories I'm Reading[5] Comments
REX BURNS “Dust Devil.” “Snake” Garrick #1. First published in The Mysterious West, edited by Tony Hillerman (HarperCollins, 1994). No record found of a later printing.
And likewise no record found of a subsequent appearance of Boulder-based PI “Snake” Garrick. The story is too short to get more than a general sense of who he is as a man, save for the description provided by his client in this story. She says to him:
Snake may have been a lightweight in her eyes, but he’s smart enough to solve the case he agrees to take on in only eighteen pages. It seems as though the woman’s brother sold a horse named Devil Dust to a fellow rancher the day before he died in an auto accident. The woman cannot now find any trace of the transaction in the dead man’s papers, but the man who has now claimed the horse has a signed invoice for it.
The detective story is a minor one, but it’s well made up for by the the several picturesque passages Burns uses to describe the largely untrammeled grassland area in which the smallish city-town of Boulder. Colorado, is located. I’d like to read more about the cases Snake Garrick has worked on, but alas, this one’s all there is and probably will be.
February 25th, 2020 at 7:57 pm
I liked this story very much too, when read some years ago. Sorry to hear it’s a singleton!
Burns published a good series of short tales in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. These feature Leonard Smith, an Aboriginal policeman in the Australian outback. They’re worth seeking out.
February 25th, 2020 at 8:07 pm
I’m in the process of tackling a large backlog of both EQMM and AHMM’s I haven’t read yet, but I haven’t come across any of Burns’ Leonard Smith stories yet.
The process is totally haphazard, so I can’t say when that might be. But thanks for the tip. I’ll be on the lookout for them!
February 26th, 2020 at 10:03 am
That anthology looks familiar, but I don’t remember the story.
February 26th, 2020 at 10:51 am
Rick
I just discovered this anthology boxed away with some western paperbacks, and it’s not. What it is a collection of original mystery stories taking place in the contemporary west, including bigger cities such as Boulder and Berkeley CA. I’m working my way through it now and will probably post reviews of a few more stories from it. Coming up next is a Dan Rhodes tale by Bill Crider I hadn’t known about before.
February 26th, 2020 at 7:16 pm
This from a period when almost any city of more than ten people seemed to have its own private eye series.
Boulder and Burns should be a good mix, sorry I missed this one.