See That My Grave Is Kept Clean: A Tommy Smith High Country Noir

Early in Paul’s exciting third contemporary western thriller featuring former U.S. Army sniper Tommy Smith (after 2016’s Cheatgrass), Tommy, who has returned to his childhood home in the Sierra Nevada Mountains to start up a business as a trail guide and build a home for his growing family, joins the search for a missing 10-year-old child. In the process, he discovers a young woman’s body in a pond. For Tommy, the dead woman is “somehow familiar but as vague as a bad dream.” She’s subsequently identified as Erika Hornberg, who’s suspected of having embezzled $1 million from the bank she managed. Soon the countryside is crawling with thugs from Reno, Nev., leaving Tommy to ponder the connections among the lost child, the dead banker, and the missing money. A thoughtful man, Tommy is slow to anger but quick to defend those in need, as he does—with gusto—in the explosive finale. Clean, elegant prose compensates for the thin mystery plot. Readers will welcome Paul’s comfortable world, with its loving relationship between Paul and his wife, appealing animals, and true friends. (Sept.)