If It Isn't One Thing...

January 15, 2025
A fatal truck crash tips Undersheriff Estelle Reyes-Guzman into a series of related and unrelated felonies in Posadas County, New Mexico. It's pretty clear that trucker Alijandro Gutierrez hit the pickup driven by Mart�n Sisneros--killing Sisneros, setting free the horse he was carrying from his trailer, and littering the intersection with the wood Gutierrez was hauling--because he was drunk. What's not clear is what Sisneros, who was also drunk, was doing in the first place behind the wheel of that truck, which was registered to Quentin Smith, a ranch hand who'd been assigned to transport El Kazzar Kobi Dancer from Nebraska to a veterinarian far away who was trusted by Smith's imperious boss, Patty Jorgenson, to treat the stallion. Estelle, who's scheduled shortly to follow her old boss, Sheriff Bill Gastner, into retirement, prepares to rouse her troops to investigate. But a serious complication arises when Posadas County Deputy Dwayne Bishop, responding to a domestic violence call, shoots Raul Cardona dead after Cardona seriously wounded both his wife, Mindy, and Bishop himself. At least that's how it looks at first. As usual, Havill unfolds his story at a leisurely pace that allocates so much time to reintroducing the franchise regulars and their families and friends and law-enforcement colleagues that the investigation into Mart�n Sisneros' unaccountable presence in Quentin Smith's RAM inevitably gets pushed to the side. But then who reads this warmhearted series for the mysteries, anyway? If it isn't one walk-on, it's another.

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January 31, 2025

Undersheriff Estelle Reyes-Guzman has a small team, so she often has to run from one case to another. She starts her evening at a domestic dispute, trying to calm a married couple, but she's frustrated when she has to leave the scene a little sooner than she'd like, to help clear up a major car crash that's blocking the highway. A pickup pulling a horse trailer has slammed into a semi, and it seems the horse is the only one is decent condition. One driver is dead, and one is so intoxicated he can't be interviewed. It's a puzzling case that will involve police forces from Guzman's Posadas County, NM, as well as Mexico, Nebraska, Iowa, and North Dakota. Why was the dead man driving that stolen pickup with the horse trailer? While Guzman is caught up in this investigation, the domestic dispute from the beginning of the novel escalates, resulting in a stabbing, several shootings, and an officer down. One month from retirement, the undersheriff juggles two major investigations while coping with injured officers. VERDICT The 27th "Posadas County Mystery" (after Perfect Opportunity) is a solid small-town police procedural. The step-by-step investigations will please fans of mysteries by Claire Booth and Terry Shames.--Lesa Holstine

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February 7, 2025
Renowned cop novelist Joseph Wambaugh claims that nothing is as much fun as well-done police work. Well, there's also reading about it. Havill provides an example with an episode featuring series heroine Estelle Reyes-Guzman, undersheriff of tiny Posadas County, New Mexico. A fellow cop claims he shot a man coming forward to kill him, but the bullet is in the man's back. Is the cop lying? Estelle has a good time discovering how it happened, and so do we. Then comes the major case. Why is a beautiful show horse standing, bleeding and frightened, on a highway at night? Its trailer is smashed, the driver of the pickup pulling it is dead, and the driver of the truck it bashed is wandering about, babbling. Estelle must discover what happened to make this happen, and the chapters that follow are textbook procedural. She interviews, analyzes, theorizes, deduces, and when key elements fall into place, she's ready. Family matters, the curse of the earlier novels for some, are kept to a minimum. Wambaugh has a point.

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