Catching Killers

January Magazine publishes a series titled “Five of a Kind," and one of the articles in the series is Bill Crider's, “Sleuths in Spurs” about Western mysteries.

He writes, “People are reading mysteries from just about any time period you can name. Except one. Nobody's reading mysteries set in America's Wild West.” Bummer. But not entirely true. My own Western mystery, Murder at Thumb Butte, has not knocked anyone off the NYT bestseller list, but sales are pleasingly steady. The audio version narrated by Jim Tedder and the large print edition have also sold well.

Crider not only summarizes “5 of a kind,” but goes on to lists many other Western mysteries. He forgot Murder at Thumb Butte, a traditional whodunit with a Western theme. To make up for his absentmindedness, here is a synopsis:

102 Amazon Reviews for 4.4 Stars
254 Goodreads Ratings for 4.1 Stars

In the spring of 1880, Steve Dancy travels to Prescott, Arizona to gain control of a remarkable invention. But on his first night in the territorial capital, his friend, Jeff Sharp is arrested for a midnight murder at Thumb Butte. Dancy launches a personal investigation to find the real murderer, only to discover the whole town wanted the victim dead. For help, he turns to another old friend and associate, Captain Joseph McAllen of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency.

Can Dancy discover the true killer before his friend stretches a rope on the courthouse square?

If you like mysteries, don’t forget about crime dramas on the American frontier. Crider’s article can guide you to almost 50 good detective yarns.

He concludes his article by writing, “Western mysteries are all around, and anyone who refuses to read them because they feature horses and Colt revolvers is missing some wonderful reading.”

I Just Gave Away Over 300 Books

Those of you who follow this blog probably know my wife and I are moving from Arizona to Nebraska. It's been over twenty years since we've moved and we forgot how much work it is. To keep moving costs down, we're giving away lots of stuff to the Salvation Army and Goodwill. Another possession we took a hard look at is books. They're heavy, thus expensive to move. We donated well over 300 books to a literacy group. After my blog post yesterday, you probably think we've gone hard-over for Kindle e-books. Nope. We still intend to move over a thousand books to the Great State of Nebraska.

Our current house has a library. It's our favorite room. It's filled with books, family memorabilia, and two over-stuffed chairs. For over thirty years we have bought books whenever we came into the vicinity of a bookstore, especially a used bookstore. My wife and I have different interests so our collection looks eclectic and we each have our favorite categories. When we prepared to move, we separated the house up and took different rooms, but not the library. In this sanctuary we had to go through the books together and each of us had an absolute veto power.

Except that it wasn't just the library. The shelving in that room could easily handle 800 books, but we outgrew it years ago. So when we had an entertainment center built in the family room, we added book shelves along an entire wall. Another 400 or so books. We outgrew this as well. I use a spare bedroom as a writing room and furnished the closet with cheap bookshelves. This collection was mostly nonfiction books I use for research or color in my novels. Before long, the shelves were full and books got stacked on the floor. My wife was perfectly okay with my mess ... as long as I kept the closet doors closed.

This would be easier

It's a wonder we found 300 books to donate to a charity. These discards were mostly fiction we knew we'd never read again or outdated nonfiction. (Okay, some were books we bought with good intentions, but never read.) I kept all of my early twentieth century Westerns and crime mysteries that I had bought for the cover art. My wife kept every cookbook. I kept all of my American history books and biographies. She kept all of her collectable books from some bygone era. Children's books? Nary a one hit the discard bin. Coffee table books? Unreadable narratives, with pretty pictures. Most of these heavy-weights went without a tear.

We pared our books by about a quarter. Before we started, I was sure at least half of them would go. Nothing goes as you expect, but I was enormously relived when this task was done. Then my wife said we needed to do the same with our DVD collection. Oh no. Chick flicks versus Westerns and films that go bang. I guess we're not done with the bickering and snide remarks.