Guilt Strikes at Granger's Store

September 1, 2023
Jarrett Creek, a tiny town cooking under the West Texas sun, seems like a spot you drive though on your way to someplace important. You might sail past Chief of Police Samuel Craddock and imagine the poor fellow wasting away from boredom. Wrong! The hero and narrator of Shames' deceptively bucolic series of small-town procedurals really enjoys the crises others would find numbing. He rounds up pigs escaping their yard and goats eating a neighbor's garden because he knows that when awful things happen, the animals' owners can be sources of crucial information. And awful things really do start happening. An expansion of a local feed-corn business reveals a long-hidden corpse. Craddock's attempts to learn the who and why of the cadaver in an investigation slowed by a stop at a church social for chitchat and baked goods is blind-sided by the discovery of another, much fresher dead body. Readers of Shames' earlier Craddock adventures, including A Risky Undertaking for Loretta Singletary (2019), will expect, and get, shocking revelations.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

September 1, 2023
A constant stream of complications keeps the life of a small-town Texas police chief eventful. Jarrett Creek chief of police Samuel Craddock has been dating Wendy Gleason for several years. So he wants to help when her daughter Allison, who's always in trouble, lands in a Mexican jail. Though she apparently drove into an accident without the special insurance Mexico requires, the lawyer Wendy hires is slow to discover the more precise circumstances. Allison's problem is put on the back burner when Mark Granger is assaulted after he's been warned not to renovate his father's feed store. Melvin Granger is in ill health, and Mark, to the disgust of his sister, Chelsea, and many others, has decided to add a gift shop. When someone named Michael Sullivan is shot dead and a fire is started at the store to try to conceal his body, Craddock starts looking for motives. But the Texas Department of Public Safety has jurisdiction, and Sgt. Leland Reagan, the new district manager, doesn't want Craddock on the case. Ignoring Reagan, who comes to realize that he's overextended himself, Craddock taps his many sources for more information on Sullivan, who lives in a nearby town but grew up in Jarrett Creek. The case becomes even more complicated when the construction crew ripping up a floor in the mill finds a long-dead body wrapped in a shellacked tarp. Since Maria Trevino, his trusted deputy, has gone to Mexico to help Allison, Craddock has to delve deep into the past on his own when he learns that Sullivan was one of three young men who installed the floor in the mill 30 years ago. Long memories help solve a fascinating case in a small town with plenty of big problems.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from September 15, 2023

This is the 10th installment (after Murder at the Jubilee Rally) in Shames's series of mysteries involving small-town Texas sheriff Samuel Craddock, one of the most delightful and best fleshed 'tecs to be found in today's crime fiction. Craddock's no Einstein. He doesn't solve crimes � la Poirot or Miss Marple, but rather through persistence and the accruing of all the details that form the backstory to the puzzling events of the novel. He possesses one secret weapon: his decades of knowledge about his town and its sometimes quirky but ultimately endearing inhabitants. Knowing the players and the territory, he solves cases that the much-vaunted state troopers cannot. As in the other entries in Shames's standout series, this case starts small but quickly balloons. A man is ambushed at a feed store, then there's a fire in the building and a body is found inside. Later, another body is found, 30 years dead, buried under the feed shop's floorboards. Before the novel ends, two more are dead, one by suicide, and Craddock has unearthed a quite unexpected murderer and motive. VERDICT The Samuel Craddock series may be the best regional crime series around today. This installment is no exception.--David Keymer

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.