Out of Season: An Undersheriff Bill Gastner Mystery [Hardcover]

For the past two decades, sexagenarian Bill Gastner has worked as an under-sheriff in Posados County, New Mexico. With only a few months to go, he eagerly awaits his upcoming retirement. Things are coming to the sheriff's department that forebode major change. His chief Estelle Rogers-Guzman is leaving office to move to another state. His best deputy plans to transfer to another office. Now his boss Sheriff Holman dies in an airplane crash.

The county supervisors insist Bill postpone his retirement and serve as the interim sheriff until the election occurs. Reluctantly, Bill acquiesces in their request. Bill begins inquiries into Holman's death. Pieces of a bullet are found in the body of the pilot. The National Transportation and Safety Board find evidence that a bullet hit the fuselage before splintering into the pilot. Pictures that the deceased sheriff shot show pastoral scenery. With the aid of the FBI, Bill plans to learn what was so important that two individuals were murdered to protect its secret.

Bill is a wonderful character, who, though weary, can physically and mentally keep astride with his much younger subordinates and peers. The linear story line cleverly hides the answer to the mystery until the end, but trying to guess why and what adds to the pleasure of reading OUT OF SEASON. Steven F. Havill keeps his tale simple yet difficult to figure out and that is the charm of the novel and the talent of the author.

Undersheriff Bill Gastner is looking forward to an uncomplicated few months before his retirement. The biggest thing on his plate is dealing with an employment application from Linda Real, a woman with some physical limitations, limitations which should not affect her ability to perform the job of dispatcher but may well be a problem on those occasions when the job duties extend beyond the norm, which wouldn't be abnormal in Posadas County, considering the personnel available at any given time. Nothing Bill can't handle. Even if his lone detective, Estelle Reyes-Guzman, is moving to Minneapolis with her husband, the medical examiner. His current dispatcher, Gayle Sedillos, is getting married and may or may not be sticking around. Plus one of his good workers has applied elsewhere, for a job which has some chances for advancement. But Bill has retirement staring him in the face, and he's coping just fine.

There is a plane crash. On board the plane is Sheriff Martin Holman. The pilot is his brother-in-law, Phil Camp. It is very unlike the Sheriff to want to fly at all, much less at night or in bad weather. The plot thickens even more when it is discovered that Phil Camp was killed by a bullet fired from the ground. The plane went down on the Boyd ranch, the shots seem to have been fired from the Finnegan ranch. Finnegan and Boyd have been disagreeing about some water issues. How much, if any, of this is connected to Holman's death?

In all the hullaballoo, involving all kinds of federal agencies being in on the investigation, Linda Real winds up working with Gayle Sedillos as a dispatcher. This settles one of his problems, but there are plenty of others.

Havill writes about the realities of policing a very large area with a limited number of people; he writes with that matter-of-factness that makes it all so very believable. His ability to write about the people living in Posadas County conveys the depths of their characters with a mimimum of words - rather like their conversations. Havill describes the landscapes, the vegetation, the heat, the vastness of Gastner's territory in a way which lets the reader know how important, how fundamental that landscape is to Gastner's life.

OUT OF SEASON is the sixth in the Bill Gastner series. While I don't think it mandatory to read the series in order, I suspect that doing so will bring nuances to the characters and the continuing stories of those characters that reading the books out of sequence will not.

While Hillerman brings much more of the Native American influence to his works, it would be fair to say that if a reader enjoys Hillerman's police procedurals about the Southwest, that reader might well enjoy Steven Havill's police procedurals about the Southwest. Havill's characters don't have the same religious connections to the land, but their attachments are just as deep, just as true.

Bill Gastner fans can worry through yet another skillfully woven tale by Steven Havill. Havill's easy style guides fans through transitions of some of our friends from past stories, but just how many are there going to be? As life and location scatters colleagues, we wonder who will be next.

Havill's books are always a risk to my rest: as tired as I might be the pages insist on being turned until the wee hours come and the resolution allows the light to be turned off.

Keep writing!

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