From Publishers Weekly
An unusual setting, rural New Mexico, and a decidedly non-New Age sleuth give this second mystery from the author of Heartshot a few fresh angles. After bypass surgery, 62-year-old Undersheriff Bill Gastner should be taking it easy, laying off the beer, the rich food and the smokes. But he isn't. Instead he drives across the state to San Estevan to visit Estelle Guzman, his former deputy, for a big feed and a chance to talk over old times. But the trip becomes a busman's holiday when he agrees to help Estelle investigate the case of a battered, pregnant young woman found unconscious near a road at the bottom of a remote canyon. A hit-and-run? The injuries don't quite compute. When the victim dies, suspects include her lover's local hippie gang and a priest who fathered her young daughter. Deftly avoiding tourist traps as he steers his plot to its unpredictable resolution, Havill delivers an evocative tale of hard lives on the edge of society. His portly detective is a genuine low-key pleasure.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
Pregnant Cecilia Burgess wasn't knocked off the San Estevan mountain road by a hit-and-run driver: she was tossed out of a moving pickup driven by five teenagers who are now being systematically eliminated. Aging, portly Posados County Undersheriff Bill Gastner, visiting his former deputy Estelle Reyes-Gutman in northern New Mexico, finds himself pulled into a revenge case strongly reminiscent of his debut in Heartshot (1991)--except that there's all too little doubt about who pulled the trigger (superannuated hippie boyfriend H. T. Finn? juvenile jailbird Robert Arajanian? alcoholic Father Nolan Parris?) or why. After poor marksmanship leaves one victim alive to testify, Estelle and Bill close in on the killer--only to set the stage for some more gunplay, a forest fire, and a rootin'-tootin' showdown in a Navaho mineshaft. Bill remains appealing in this dusty tour--more action than mystery/detection--of the Land of Enchantment. --
Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
