Dead Weight

I absolutely love the Bill Gastner series. I have read a few unsatisfying novels lately and this one was a real joy. Gastner is the nearly 70-year-old insomniac sherrif of a small town in New Mexico. He consumes great quantities of coffee and Mexican food while he juggles a homocide investigation, a mysterious accusation against one of his officers and a landlord/renter dispute. Politics and good police work don't necessarily go hand-in-hand, but Gastner makes it work anyway. Havill's characters remind me very much of those of fellow New Mexican author Tony Hillerman. For me, this is very high praise since I absolutely love the Leaphorn/Chee novels. If Havill and Hillerman are par for the course in the world of New Mexican authors than I am going to looking for more of them. Truly a delightful read. I give this one a grade of A.

This is New Mexico @ its best. You can feel the heat, taste the dust. No wisps in the willows or baying of other-wordly night creatures. These are two-legged predators. Plain talk, plain people--you know them. You can see them. You can hear them. If you want rockets & bombs bursting in air, go somewhere else. Otherwise hunker down to Posadas County. Meet the folks, heroes & villains--all as likeable & as ornery as the next. Havill is better than a Chamber of Commerce travel pitch. I actually look forward to going to this gawd-forsaken place. The series (8 & counting) deserves someone to unearth this guy. Bill Gastner is an American Morse--crusty & 70-years tired. Havill writes a cozy procedural. He's good. Try him. I don't give 5 stars.

Sheriff Bill Gastner has been part of Posedas County, New Mexico for his entire life and part of the sheriff's department since 1966. Now a septuagenarian, Bill nears retirement waiting for the upcoming election to select his replacement.However, instead of gracefully fading into the background, Bill finds one of the most difficult cases of his illustrious career dumped on his lap. An internal investigation of a member of his staff, Deputy Tom Pasquale is accused of more than just destroying the rental property he leases. Apparently, the county commissioners have received a note from a concerned citizen claiming that Pasquale has hit on Mexican nationals for $100 every time he stops them.Bill also has a potential homicide to deal to investigate. One of the battling Sissons, stars of the local family fight scene dubbed the "Jim and Grace" show, died in an apparent misfortune. Did Grace finally kill Jim or did a grotesque accident really occur?The latest release in Steven F. Havill's great police procedural, DEAD WEIGHT, is another superb entry in the Sheriff Gastner collection. The two prime inquiries are fully developed because the charcaters seem more like flesh and blood than part of a novel, even for someone reading their first book in the series. The story line centers on the residents of the county and the surrounding landscape, although the police investigations are in full bloom. Anyone who wants a cerebral character-based plot, the Gastner novels, in which the first few are being reprinted, is must reading.Harriet Klausner