A Homecoming for Murder: A Sheriff Grover Bramlett Mystery

Sheriff Grover Bramlett of Chakchiuma County, Miss., last seen in A Legacy of Vengeance, is looking forward to hunting squirrels and watching wrestling on TV with his visiting grandson, Marcellus, but a murder intervenes. Nobody in the backwater town of Sheffield is sorry about the killing of schoolteacher Jesse Bondreaux. Bondreaux seduced schoolgirls; he videotaped his conquests; and he was blackmailing two older women and one sleaze of a man. But the schoolteacher's death in a quiet cemetery is messy, and one of the witnesses to the speeding getaway car is Marcellus. Although Armistead relies on an implausible, hidden-in-plain-sight gambit for his conclusion, the procedural-rich chase prior to that is an exciting one. The side details--the romances, Bramlett's worry about his grandson, a squalid power struggle among small-town cops for possession of a seized Corvette--are all effectively employed. (Sept.)