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Murder in the Air

by Bill Crider
Minotaur Books, August 2010, $24.99

There's something rotten in the air in Sheriff Dan Rhodes' Texas county, and it's the fowl smell of chickens from a giant chicken farm owned by one Lester Hamilton (the chickens aren't giant-sized; the farm is). Unfortunately, though the citizens are up in arms about it, the sheriff can't do much about the smell. However, when Lester is shortly found floating face down in an abandoned rock pit, the investigation gives Rhodes a chance to kill two birds with one stone.

The sheriff is faced with the difficult task of finding out who hated Lester enough to kill him, which was just about everybody within a mile or two of the farm. And hate wasn't the only possible motive, seeing as the deceased was a wealthy man and the farm a valuable asset. Who stood to gain from his death?

Rhodes is soft-spoken, straight-forward, determined, and has a dry sense of humor that helps him deal with officious politicians and ornery townsfolk alike. It also comes in handy when he has to deal with his two deputies who vie with each other to try his patience using Abbott and Costello style routines that would have made those two venerable movie comics blush. If you can handle their wisecracking humor and painful puns such as "No Les, no more," you'll enjoy this otherwise straight-forward police procedural with a Texas drawl.

This is the 17th Sheriff Dan Rhodes mystery, the first of which won an Anthony Award for Best First Novel. In Murder in the Air, although Crider breaks no new ground, he continues his mastery of the series that remains as popular as ever.

Joseph Scarpato, Jr.

crider_murderintheairA fowl and funny mystery featuring Texas Sheriff Dan Rhodes.

Teri Duerr
1520

by Bill Crider
Minotaur Books, August 2010, $24.99

Crider
August 2010
murder-in-the-air
24.99
Minotaur Books