Thu 17 Mar 2016
Reviewed by Barry Gardner: BILL CRIDER – Booked For a Hanging.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[2] Comments
BILL CRIDER – Booked For a Hanging. Dan Rhodes #6. St. Martin’s, hardcover, 1992. No paperback edition.
I like Bill’s P.I., Truman Smith, and I enjoyed The Texas Capitol Murders, but I’m mighty glad to see my old friend Sheriff Dan Rhodes again. There are more and more people mining the rural vein, but nobody does it better than Bill Crider.
Rhodes is married now, to a lady he met in an earlier case. Otherwise, life goes on pretty much as usual around the Blacklin Country Sheriff’s Department Oh, yes — they do have a new computer, which has been appropriated by Hack the dispatcher, who seems to regard it as he would his first grandchild.
The book opens with the discovery of the hanged body of a rare book dealer, who owned some buildings in the neighboring small town of Obert. It’s fairly obvious that it’s murder, and as it develops that the dead man was rumored to have possession of an extremely rare book, there’s at least one possible motive. His partner, his lover, and another rare book dealer are present to complicate the case, and before things shake out two more people are dead.
As always with the Rhodes books, there are numerous other things going on. This time they include a librarian out to save the world from censorship, a semi-naked man inhabiting a local dumpster, and a little minor league cattle rustling. All the regulars are present, including the aforementioned Hack, Lawton, the jailer, and Ruth, the lady deputy introduced a couple of books ago.
Folks, I was raised in a small Texas town, and I’m here to tell you that he’s got it down. I know the phrase is overworked, but there isn’t a more apt one: these are real people. I do have one small reservation, though — Dan Rhodes is a hell of a lot nicer than any rural Sheriff I ever knew.
Bill’s style is perfectly suited to the material; wryly humorous, straightforward, and unobtrusive. The atmosphere strikes a nice balance between lighthearted and serious, but you won’t go away from a Dan Rhodes book feeling down. Long may he be Sheriff.
March 17th, 2016 at 9:47 pm
Like Barry I have experience of small Texas towns and Bill has them down perfectly from the sometimes comical almost Mayberry like gentility to the gothic violence and darkness that can erupt.
His vision is closer to reality than most people who have not lived there can imagine. Bill does soften it a bit as he would be the first to admit, and Dan is much wiser than the average lawman, but it is not all that far from my experience in North, East, West, South, and Coastal Texas or in Oklahoma for that matter only things where I am now are much more corrupt than anyone but Jim Thompson could portray.
March 18th, 2016 at 8:12 am
This is a book I own but I’ve never read, one of the few Rhodes books I haven’t. I don’t know why. I usually gobble up mysteries about book collectors and rare books as soon as they come into the house.