Mystery in a Rural County

Sheriff Dan Rhodes of Blacklin County (Texas) hands are full again in the 15th book of this series by Bill Crider. The name of this book is “Of All Sad Words”. Some county officials are unhappy about the Citizens Police Academy he lead and some of the “vigilantes” who took it. Then, there is an explosion and fire at a trailer of “suspected” meth dealers that must have been the work of these “vigilantes”. One of these “suspected” meth dealers is also discovered dead.

On top of all of this, the county officials want the sheriff to follow-up on a delayed website for the sheriff’s office – to make sure it gets done.

Finally there are the regular (not necessarily normal) calls he gets to deal with. One widow calls him to remove some possums from her attic. Another man has problems with flying saucers stealing his electricity.

It is interesting to see how the sheriff deals with these and more problems and how he makes use of some of the recent graduates from his Citizens Police Academy.

Also interesting is how the author uses references to a character in another one of his book series – a series he no longer writes. Will he be writing another book in the Dr Sally Goode series? I hope so. Anyway, I enjoyed this Dan Rhodes book as I have the previous ones.

"Just The Facts"

Bill Crider is one of my favorite Texas mystery writers. I found out he co-authored a book called Houston Homicide with a former PI named Clyde Wilson. I had two reasons to read the book. First, it was written by Bill Crider and second, it takes place in Houston where I grew up.

A family (man, wife, and his mother) is murdered in their home. This is when a homicide detective in the Houston Police Department is introduced in the book. His name is Ted Stephens. He is asked to take charge of the investigation by his boss.

The book was written in a first hand account. It seemed to me this book had a flavor of the tv series Dragnet. Do you remember the phrase “just the facts”? This was the type of information you learn from Ted Stephens early on – very concise. There was very little elaboration.

Ted Stephens identifies and investigates several likely suspects – including a son of the murdered man. He is helped in his investigation by a friend – a PI named Clive Watson. Each of the suspects seem to have alibis – including the son. Does it sound like the son was involved?

Well…, as a result of his investigation and the help of his friend, he is able to determine the son was involved. He gets testimony from a dirty lawyer and he discovers the alibi of the son was not true. His alibi was a young lady who was on drugs. She is rescued when a drug overdose would have meant her death. Thru this experience she becomes convinced she has a calling to become a nun. So she decides to confess and verifies the son committed the murders when he was trying to rob his grandmother.

With the information he gets, Ted arrests the son and closes the case.

As a side story, Ted learns the girl who wants to become a nun is diagnosed with cancer a week after the case is closed. A month or so later, he learns the cancer goes into remission. He is not sure he believes in miracles but in the end decides he needs to go back to church.

Oh..., by the way. The phrase “just the facts” was a shortened version of what was really said on Dragnet. The real phrase according to Snopes was “All we want (or know) are the facts”.