Description
From Publishers Weekly In his 10th entertaining outing (after last year's Bag Limit), Havill's laconic hero, Bill Gastner, after retiring as sheriff of Posadas County (N.Mex.), has become the state livestock inspector, while the mother of his godchildren, Estelle Reyes-Guzman, has assumed the post of undersheriff for the county. The new sheriff, Bob Torrez, has picked a fine time to attend a training conference. When a student pilot spots a corpse on the desert floor, Estelle steps into the beginning of a crime spree that will soon cover both sides of the nearby Mexican border. When a second body turns up and a suspicious fire takes a third life, Torrez cuts his trip short and returns to assist his investigators. Spanish text dots the pages, lending the flavor of old Mexico to the author's finely woven plot. When Estelle requests information from Mexico's police force, Captain Tomxa0s Naranjo offers not only his assistance but news of a south-of-the-border homicide that may be connected to Posadas County's latest victims. The answers begin to take shape with the removal of two small clues from a pickup caught sneaking away from the taped-off desert crime scene. Skilled investigation, happenstance and cooperation mesh through every phase of the puzzle, ushering the reader along to one satisfying conclusion.Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal Series star Bill Gastner (Privileged to Kill) has retired but still offers support to new County Sheriff Robert Torrez and Undersheriff Estelle Reyes-Guzman. Estelle subsequently juggles family problems while dealing with two murders in the nearby desert. Solid groundwork for a new series. For collections where Southwestern mysteries are popular.Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Booklist Like K. C. Constantine, who retired his longtime series hero, police chief Mario Balzic, and turned over the reins to the supporting cast, Havill has shifted his attention from former Posadas County, New Mexico, sheriff Bill Gastner to colleagues Robert Torrez, now sheriff, and Estelle Reyes-Guzman, recently returned to Posadas as undersheriff. With Torrez out of town on a training course, the focus this time is on Reyes-Guzman, who must deal with two shocking murders in the desert near the Mexican border. With Gastner playing a supporting role, Reyes-Guzman juggles a tricky investigation with a crisis on the home front: her aging mother is failing and needs her daughter's help to sort through her memories of a long, rich life. Throughout this low-key, character-driven series, Havill has managed as well as anyone in the genre to balance the particulars of cop procedure with the often unspoken emotions at the core of small-town life. The focus on Reyes-Guzman and her family brings a different dynamic to the series, but the human drama remains equally satisfying. Bill Ott Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Steven F. Havill is the author of the Sheriff Bill Gastner mysteries, as well as several westerns. Scavengers is the first book in a new series to feature Undersheriff Estelle Reyes-Guzman. He lives with his wife, Kathleen, in Lincoln, New Mexico. Read more
Features & Highlights
- With
- Scavengers
- , Steven Havill begins his new series featuring former Gastner deputy Estelle Reyes-Guzman. Estelle played a supporting role in the Gastner books, then left New Mexico to follow her surgeon husband to cold, cold Minnesota. Now she is back, welcomed by the whole department and already swamped in her role of Undersheriff under the new sheriff, Bobby Torrez. But Gastner's readers have the best of both worlds. The setting is still Posadas County, and Gastner, having taken on the presumably less stressful job of State Livestock Inspector (
- "What are those? Burros?" "Miniature donkeys." "Oh."
- ) is prominently in the background, even though that seems like an oxymoron.Bobby Torrez is at a law enforcement conference, and Estelle, and early after her return Estelle is landed with the case of a body is found in the desert - that of a man who has been badly beaten and then shot. Estelle and her deputies begin the forensic process -- photographing, sending the body to autopsy, looking for identification and clues as to why the man was so badly beaten and then killed. Not long afterward, the discovery of another body yields more evidence of what happened and why. But Estelle is still a long way from finding answers to all the questions involved; meanwhile she is coping with an aging mother and a case of flu that has most of her family on their aching backs. Gastner, who is in the area tracking down a rumor of animals being illegally brought over the border, can help and does, but the horrifying and breathtaking climax is Estelle's burden alone, and she carries it off with honors. In the smoothest of segues Havill skillfully retains the well-loved familiar characters and setting while craftily turning the responsibility of carrying his compelling stories to a new and engaging star.
