Can Ghosts Commit Murder?

     Sheriff Dan Rhodes has learned to put up with a lot from the folks of Blacklin County, Texas; not to mention the barrage of teasing and gossip he gets from his dispatcher, Hack, and his jailer, Lawton. Rhodes handles everything with a cool head and a good bit of compassion. Although, Rhodes is not what you would imagine when you think of a Texas sheriff. He doesn't wear a cowboy hat or boots; there isn't a six shooter strapped to his hip. In fact, he prefers the Kel-Tec he keeps in his ankle holster.
   Rhodes is a very logical and methodical investigator, so when Hack calls him in the middle of the night to back up Deputy Ruth Grady who is on a "shots fired" call at the local haunted house, Rhodes doesn't give it a second thought. After sloshing through the rain to the back of the house, he and Ruth find Neil Foshee, local meth dealer, face-down in one of the rooms. A cursory search doesn't turn up much else. The suspect list includes Neil's former girlfriend, Vicki, who happens to be friends with Rhodes's wife. There is also the nephew of Clearview's mayor, as well as Neil's partners in crime, his cousins Earl and Louie.
     Complicating his investigation is the fact that the house is said to be haunted. The former owner--a  man named Moore who also taught at the local high school--died in the house of a heart attack nearly forty years ago. (The house has remained empty since the owner's death; with only local drug dealers and vandals daring to venture inside.) By all accounts Moore was a bully of a teacher and he would use a BB gun to kill any animals that came onto his property.  Rhodes doesn't believe in ghosts, but his "friend" Seepy Benton, the community college math professor who fancies himself an unofficial investigator for the sheriff's department, does. Though Rhodes himself has had some creepy feelings of being watched while visiting the house, Rhodes is still a skeptic.
    Many folks--Hack and Lawton included--believe that the ghost has something to do with Neil's death. After the scene of Neil's death has been cleared, Benton wants Sheriff Rhodes to let them investigate the house. Knowing he won't have any peace until he lets the professor look around, Rhodes takes Benton and his partner through the house and they find a skeleton in a closet in the attic--a room Rhodes neglected to clear the night of the murder. Whoever the woman was--Benton can tell from the shape of the pelvic bones--Rhodes can see from the skull fracture that she must have been murdered or at least fallen and hit her head on something hard. But then, how did she get into the closet in the attic where she was found?
     On top of these two bodies, Rhodes has to deal with copper thieves, a runaway bull, a county commissioner who wants to arm the sheriff's department for WWIII, and the rest of the characters that occupy Blacklin County. What is a small town sheriff to do?

Take a Stroll Through the Pines

Blake Crouch has written an unnerving novel titled the Pines.  Wayward Pines, Idaho is a quintessential small town in America, or so it seems on the surface.  Secret Service Agent Ethan Burke visits the town in search of two missing federal agents but is sidelined by an auto accident when he arrives.  He wakes up at the edge of town with amnesia, a killer headache and soon realizes that this "little corner of paradise" is not what it seems.  Although the townspeople are friendly and act "normal," little cracks in their facades begin to appear.  Ethan has no ID or cell phone and is thwarted whenever he tries to contact his family or his Secret Service boss.  As Ethan continues to drag up more questions than answers, he realizes that he

may never leave this creepy town alive!  Blake Crouch was a fan of the television shows Twin Peaks, Northern Exposure and The X-Files and he wrote Pines in order to create something that made him feel the way Twin Peaks did-- a story about a small town in the middle of nowhere that is beautiful on the outside but with a pitch-black underbelly.  Blake Crouch was born in North Carolina in 1978 and earned his undergraduate degrees in English and Creative Writing from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and published his first two novels within five years of graduation.  He has since published eight novels, many novellas and short stories and three novels cowritten with J. A. Konrath, Fully Loaded, Run,  and Stirred.  He currently lives in Durango, Colorado.

New British Mysteries

I've just spent my weekend watching two of our newest British mystery series. First was Set 22 of the Midsomer Murders series. I love this series, but, as loyal watchers know, two seasons ago, the beloved Tom Barnaby was replaced by his cousin John Barnaby. I enjoy the second Barnaby, but no one can replace the wonderful performance of John Nettles as Tom. This newest series was very good and like the others, features the plethora of quirky small town personalities that have made this series so popular. There is no guts and gore here, so die-hard CSI fans may not like what they see, but if you can stand just a little blood, then this show may be for you. If you have never seen this series before, I would suggest starting at or near the beginning of the show, so that you can get a feel of how the dynamic between the senior detective and his plodding side-kick works. The library has just about all of the show starting with the "Killing at Badger's Drift".
The second show I watched was Series 6 of Inspector Lewis. For those of you who aren't familiar, this series is a spin-off of the Inspector Morse series based on the books by Colin Dexter. Lewis also features the wise lead detective and his long suffering sergeant, but instead of the Midsomer counties, these two muddle around the area of Oxford University. Unlike the sergeant in Midsomer, Sergeant James Hathaway is well educated and a bit brooding, but extremely wise for someone so young. Detective Inspector Lewis, himself, is a streetwise old-school copper who favors common sense and opera. From the way this series ended, I think it may be the last, or next-to-last for Inspector Lewis; which is quite sad, because I love the dynamic of these two characters and the wonderful characterization of the supporting cast. (It also helps that the young man who plays DS Hathaway is a cutie!)
We have several more different British series that our regular patrons adore, so if you want a good old murder mystery without the guts and gore, pick up one of these and give them a try.