The Right Side of Wrong: A Red River Mystery

Violence is on the rise in the small town of Center Spring, Tex., in Wortham’s exciting third Red River mystery (after 2012’s Burrows), this one set in 1966. Constable Cody Parker—along with his uncle, Constable Ned Parker, and John Washington, a black deputy sheriff—discovers that his remote area near the Oklahoma border is becoming a pipeline for some murderous and unrepentant drug dealers, and further, that there might be an informant within the sheriff’s department. Cody unwisely decides to follow some of the dealers across the Mexican border. Folksy neighbors, good old boys, and Bible-thumping grandmas all speak with a twang so thick it could only be cut with a chainsaw. Two preteen cousins, Top and Pepper, a tomboy, give new meaning to the term “reckless endangerment.” Readers will want to see a lot more of the (mostly) law-abiding Parker clan. Agent: Jeanie Pantelakis, Sullivan Maxx Literary Agency. (July)