No Accident: A Posadas County Mystery

Havill’s enticing 25th Posadas County mystery (after 2020’s Less than a Moment) finds Undersheriff Estelle Reyes-Guzman at the Broken Spur Saloon, where local hothead Johnny Rabke has thrown a billiard ball at a visiting bar patron up from Mexico and knocked him unconscious. While sorting things out with the witnesses and managing the back-talking Rabke, Estelle learns that her younger son, Carlos, has been in a bicycle accident in Briones, Calif. Estelle and her husband travel to Briones, where they discover that Carlos has been badly injured and his girlfriend, Tasha Qarshe, was thrown from the tandem bicycle they were riding together. When it’s revealed that the pickup truck that hit the couple was stolen and had deliberately driven back over Carlos, Estelle realizes that the hit-and-run was intentional, and she begins to investigate with the help of a fingerprint expert from the San Francisco PD. The tension rises as Estelle unravels the jealousies brewing at the local bike shop where Carlos and Tasha spent a lot of their time. The peripheral characters add little to the plot, but fans of the astute Estelle will enjoy the ride. (Mar.)