Home Fires

January 1, 2021
In the fourth Hank Worth novel, the Branson, MO, sheriff is having a very hard time coming to terms with the tragic events detailed in A Deadly Turn (2019). Hoping a change of scenery might help, he heads out of town to visit a friend, but his trip turns into the investigation of a missing man. Meanwhile, back home, Hank's chief deputy, series regular Sheila Turley, is in charge; but her handling of a murder investigation, in addition to some reforms she's implemented, meets with mixed responses. Booth skillfully juggles two stories, punctuating the novel with a series of minor cliff-hangers to keep us interested in one story when she switches to the other. The book is more episodic than previous entries in the series, but it is no less compelling. Booth, a former crime reporter, has a strong prose style: it really feels like she is writing about real people and events.

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February 15, 2024
A shorthanded police department in Branson, Missouri, deals with a major disaster and an unexpected murder. Sheriff Hank Worth is at the funeral for an unpopular medical examiner with top law enforcement officials from southwestern Missouri when everyone's beepers go off. All that's left of the Skyrocket fireworks warehouse is a still-burning crater containing an unknown number of dead bodies. The authorities know that about 14 people worked there. Faye Halliday, who owned the place with her husband, is both hysterical and evasive. Because of the possibility of a terrorist attack, help arrives from several federal agencies even as Worth tries to deal with reporters without mentioning this possibility. His second-in-command, Sheila Turley, returns early from medical leave to help out despite her pain. The best information Worth gets is from a young man who worked at Skyrocket before he enlisted in the Marines. He tells them about a mysterious locked room that doesn't appear in the building plans. In the absence of the ME, Turley calls on the University of Missouri, which sends its entire pathology department and a forensic anthropologist to identify the bodies. Skyrocket was in financial trouble and may have been cutting corners, but Worth suspects the locked room holds the key to the mystery. His life is turned upside down when the pathologists uncover years of sloppy work by the late ME, who listed cardiac arrest as the cause of death for many people without even examining them. One of those people was Worth's mother-in-law, whose death two years earlier now seems to have been murder. An excellent procedural with the added attraction of a difficult, personally painful mystery.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from March 1, 2024

Sheriff Hank Worth is at the funeral for the local medical examiner when he learns that the largest employer in Branson County, MO, a fireworks warehouse, has gone up in flames. Law enforcement teams from all over show up, but Worth has to deal with the grieving families, the media, and rumors of a bomb or terrorism. The department handles it without Sheila Turley, Worth's second-in-command, who's on medical leave following a brutal attack. Frustrated to be sidelined, Turley coerces off-duty deputies into assisting her so she can handle computer investigations and phone calls. Then a resident in the pathology department of the University of Missouri informs Worth that the recently deceased medical examiner was sloppy in his investigations. One of those cases involved Worth's beloved mother-in-law, who didn't die of a heart attack but was in fact poisoned. As Worth investigates that case, Turley and a young deputy concentrate on the fire at the warehouse, break-ins at the homes of the victims, and a murder. VERDICT The sequel to Dangerous Consequences is an outstanding police procedural that plunges readers into a community's nightmare. Readers of Steven F. Havill and Bill Crider will appreciate the novel's focus on small-town life and a local police force.--Lesa Holstine

Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2024
An explosion at a fireworks manufacturer's warehouse leaves more than a dozen people dead. That should be enough to keep Branson County, Missouri, Sheriff Hank Worth busy for a while, but unexpected news from the morgue sends him reeling. Shockingly, it appears the recently deceased medical examiner has long made mistakes, even attributing a possible homicide to natural causes. And, purely by chance, the deceased was someone very close to Hank. Booth's sixth Hank Worth novel, following Dangerous Consequences (2022), shows us a version of the man that we haven't seen before. Every case is personal to Hank because he's a compassionate man, but this case strikes so close to home that he's forced to face some extremely difficult choices. Should he exhume the body to try to prove cause of death? How far should he go to solve this puzzle, and what is he willing to risk? Booth was a crime reporter before turning to fiction, and it shows. Her writing style is straightforward and unadorned, which gives her books a feeling of authenticity. A fine novel.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.