Survivors Will Be Shot Again: A Sheriff Dan Rhodes Mystery

At the start of Crider’s entertaining 23rd Dan Rhodes mystery (after 2015’s Between the Living and the Dead), the Blacklin County, Tex., lawman, who’s enjoying a day off, deftly foils an armed robber at a convenience store by tossing him a loaf of bread. Rhodes’s day off comes to an end when Billy Bacon, a loan officer at a local bank, phones the police to report yet another theft at the B-Bar-B, his ranch. Other people in the vicinity of Billy’s spread have been robbed, including Melvin Hunt, who lost an expensive welding rig. Inside Billy’s barn, lying between two stacks of empty boxes, is a dead body, which Rhodes identifies as Melvin’s. But is Melvin the thief? It doesn’t make sense to Billy that Melvin would have stolen things from his own place. In addition to solving Melvin’s murder, the folksy and shrewd sheriff must deal with a host of other crimes, both major and minor, on the way to the satisfactory resolution of this inventive installment. Agent: Kim Lionetti, BookEnds. (Aug.)