Rollover by Susan Slater

First Line: "Damn!" Dan watched the needle on the heat gauge go into the red and then hold at the top.

Dan Mahoney, an insurance investigator for United Life and Casualty, is on his way to Wagon Mound, New Mexico, when his car breaks down. Out in the middle of nowhere with only his dog Simon with him, he's very fortunate to have an old guy in an on-its-last-legs pickup stop to give him a ride to town. However, the ride is anything but uneventful, and little does Dan know but he's already been given his welcome to the small New Mexico town.

Using the noise of the Bean Days celebration, robbers tunneled into the First Community Bank of Wagon Mound-- not into the vault where there was at least $2 million, but into the safety deposit boxes. The only thing that appears to have been stolen was the century-old sapphire and diamond necklace made by Tiffany that was owned by 85-year-old Gertrude Kennedy. United Life and Casualty carried a $500,000 policy on the necklace, and that's why Mahoney's there-- and he's going to need eyes in the back of his head because the robbers have every intention of keeping their secrets.

Rollover is based on an actual bank robbery in Wagon Mound, New Mexico, that is unsolved to this day. (Yes, the place actually exists.) Slater went there to interview residents and discovered that interest in the event was still intense. This book is her version of what she believed could have happened, and it's a fast-paced, engrossing story.

I enjoyed watching how Dan interacted with the residents of Wagon Mound as he tried to find out what really happened in that bank. He became very unpopular, very quickly. The bank heist was difficult to solve and kept me guessing till the end, due in part to the fact that the suspect list contained people of all ages, genders, and walks of life. Having Dan's fiancee Elaine there added some badly needed normality to the story because the author made it extremely difficult to pin any of the suspects down.  She also uses the New Mexico setting to good effect, stirring emotions and increasing tension.

What I couldn't believe was how quickly I devoured this story. I'm definitely looking forward to more insurance investigations by Dan Mahoney!
 

Rollover by Susan Slater

ISBN: 9781464202964

Poisoned Pen Press © 2014

Paperback, 220 pages

Private Investigator, #2 Dan Mahoney mystery

Rating: B+

Source: Purchased at The Poisoned Pen.


 

@ The Poisoned Pen with Susan Slater and Reavis Z. Wortham!

When Denis and I headed over to The Poisoned Pen last Thursday, it looked as though we might get caught in a rainstorm-- the sky over the Valley was filled with several large groups of very dark clouds. 

It made me glad that we were traveling in the Jeep, which had an extended lift installed when we bought it to help us traverse some of those very rough trails here in the state. One night when Denis came home from an Arizona Diamondbacks baseball game, he discovered that the extra lift also helps keep us above water in flooded streets. 

But nary a drop of rain fell on us, and we made our purchases, reserved our seats, and sat at the table at the back of the store to read our books and chat with anyone who stopped by to see how we were doing.

There were plenty of special surprises in store that evening: Barbara Peters' husband, Rob, had cooked up a big batch of chili and jalapeño cornbread; Barbara and Rob had also brought their dogs-- Odin, a 7-year-old Wire-haired Fox Terrier, and Nala, a 10-month-old bundle of sweetness the couple had recently rescued from a local animal shelter-- and when that evening's authors arrived, they brought a third with them. Not only would we be seeing Susan Slater, author of the Ben Pecos and Dan Mahoney mystery series set in New Mexico and Reavis Z. Wortham, author of the Red River mysteries set in 1960s Texas, Donis Casey had stopped by, too. I love Donis's Alafair Tucker mysteries set in turn-of-the-twentieth-century Oklahoma, and she's so nice and so much fun that it's always a treat to see  her. 

"Why do you write mysteries?"

L to R: Donis Casey, Reavis Wortham, Susan Slater

If you look closely at the picture above, at the bottom of it you will see Denis's arm as he gives Odin a good scratch, and Odin was appreciating it so much that Donis and Reavis were laughing. It was such a relaxed, informal evening that Barbara just had the authors take the conversation wherever they wanted. 

Susan Slater began by pointing out the twelve-year gap between her Dan Mahoney novels, Flash Flood and Rollover. She'd received emails from female fans who wanted "more Dan Mahoney," whom they likened to Craig Johnson's Walt Longmire, and she was more than happy to oblige. 

L to R: Susan Slater, Barbara Peters

"Ever since I wrote The Pumpkin Seed Massacre I knew I wanted to go back to Wagon Mound, New Mexico, which is the site of an unsolved crime. It's a true story that's always fascinated me... of a bank robbery that targeted the safety deposit boxes instead of the vault," Susan told us.

She also told us of attending the Taos Writers Conference and talking with award-winning authors Tony Hillerman and Norman Zollinger. "Zollinger asked me 'Who tells you how to write from a man's point of view?' I didn't realize that it was supposed to be difficult for a woman to do that. He then told me, 'I've never said this to a beginning writer before, but-- quit your day job!'

"Some of you have probably heard my answer to anyone who asks me why I write mysteries," Susan said. "It's to stave off Alzheimer's by coming up with plots that aren't easy to solve!"

When Slater then said that she's been told she should not have given her insurance investigator Dan Mahoney a girlfriend, a woman from across the aisle said (with feeling), "Shoot her!" to which Barbara jokingly replied, "Better her than the dog!" and the room erupted in laughter. (To tell you the truth, that "Shoot her" comment-- although made in jest-- made me wonder if the woman didn't take her fiction a little too seriously!)

For many years, Slater lived in New Mexico, but now she calls Florida home. Barbara asked her about an incident that occurred in a pizza place near where Slater lives, and Susan was more than happy to fill in the details. It seems that the government had put someone in the Witness Protection Program, moved him down to Florida, and given him a job at Goomba's Pizza. The man broke his cover when he pistol-whipped a customer for bringing back an underdone calzone. Yikes!

 "Aunt, I made that stuff up!"

Reavis Z. Wortham

There's something about Reavis Z. Wortham that says Texas. It might be the name. It might be the hat. Or the mustache and goatee. Or the jeans. Could even be those boots that have something to do with it. He writes the Red River mysteries, historical thrillers set in the 1960s that feature the first official black deputy in Lamar County, Texas. Vengeance Is Mine is the latest book in the series about a mobster who decides to hide out with his blonde bombshell of a girlfriend in small town east Texas. Those of us who grew up in small towns were very aware of one fact: there's no way someone like those two could hide out in a small town!

Wortham has had readers take offense at the way dogs are treated in his books, saying that too many die-- all the while looking at him as though he's the murderer. "I don't kill dogs, my characters kill dogs!" Wortham states emphatically. "Why is it that you can kill 100 people in your book and people applaud, but if you kill one dog, you will get hate mail the likes of which you will not believe!" All the authors, as well as Barbara Peters and several of us in the audience, thought that people today do not realize that attitudes towards dogs were very different in the 1960s, and in particular the attitudes of people who lived out in the country.

Wortham had an aunt chew him out for airing the family linen in his books where millions of people all around the world ("I wish!") were reading about it. "Aunt, I made all that stuff up!" Wortham told her. The aunt proceeded to hang up on him.

"The way I grew up has disappeared."

Donis Casey

Donis Casey said, "The way I grew up has disappeared. People were self-sufficient and raised their children to be the same way." She went on to tell us that she set her Alafair Tucker series in the 1910s on purpose because "when most people think Oklahoma and historical series, they think Depression. During the time that I'm writing about, Oklahoma was one of the most progressive states in the country. There was a lot of wealth in the state, and it was also very strongly into unions. In fact, more more Oklahomans voted socialist than in any other state during that time period."  

Casey and Wortham then talked a bit about the mountains of eastern Oklahoma which is a very rough area in which people go to hide when they don't want to be found. (And they aren't.) Wortham is very familiar with the area because it's so close to his own neck of the woods in Texas. Back in the time period of the Alafair Tucker novels, there were a lot of stills and moonshine in that eastern section of Oklahoma. Now instead of stills, you'll find crystal meth.

An Englishman and a dozen goats....

Available Now!

With all the talk swinging back to crime, Susan Slater told us more about her latest book, Rollover.  

Her main character, insurance investigator Dan Mahoney, has been sent to Wagon Mound, New Mexico, because one of the safety deposit boxes that was broken into during the Bean Days celebration belonged to 85-year-old Gertie, and her extremely valuable diamond and sapphire Tiffany necklace is gone. The necklace had been in her family for generations and survived the sinking of the Titanic-- but it couldn't survive the Wagon Mound bank robbers. 

In fact, the necklace seems to be the focus of the robbery-- until other safety deposit box owners claim that they have items missing, too. 

Slater went to Wagon Mound and interviewed residents, finding that the robbery is still a hot topic of conversation even though it took place almost twenty years ago. "Everyone I interviewed said the same two things: it had to be an inside job, and it had to have something to do with drugs," Susan said.

The conversation took a bit of a bizarre turn when Slater mentioned wanting to leave Albuquerque after having lived there for several years. "I picked up an Englishman and a dozen goats... not necessarily in that order... and I moved," she told us. "It doesn't say much about a relationship when the best thing you did together was dehorn baby goats," she added. The look on Wortham's face was priceless, and I wished I hadn't put my camera away.

Donis Casey quickly said, "I had a great idea for a murder that hinged on dehorning...." When everyone looked at her in abject puzzlement, she told us that in doing some research, she'd learned that the scabs that form when the horns are removed are extremely poisonous to humans-- but she could never figure out how to administer the poison in any way that made sense. (You can bet the farm that if I read any crime fiction in the future that makes even the slightest reference to dehorning, I'm immediately going to become suspicious!)

What's Next?

Available Now!

As the evening began to draw to a close, Barbara asked the authors what they're working on now. Susan Slater told us that Dan and Elaine would next be seen in Florida, and Reavis Wortham said that his next Red River mystery would take place in 1967 and involve three missing businessmen. Donis Casey said, "I'm going to have to deal with World War I. I'm learning that President Wilson wasn't that great a guy. He took away some of our civil liberties, and he made miscegenation [marriage between races] illegal, for example."

Someone in the audience asked Wortham about the way he writes his books. "I don't know what's going to happen until I write it," he said with a laugh. "No, it's true! Burrows? The entire thing was a dream." He went on to explain that he often has recurring dreams and that they sometimes work themselves out in his books as he writes.

As we adjourned to talk books and enjoy more of Rob's chili and cornbread, I had Susan and Reavis sign my books, and we talked for a bit about life in small towns. Denis had-- as usual-- looked up their books on his phone during the event and ordered  available audiobooks, and-- as usual-- we enjoyed talking over our favorite parts of the evening on the way home in the rain. I've already read and enjoyed Rollover, and after reading the first fifty pages of The Rock Hole (the first Red River mystery), I can tell that I'm already falling for Wortham's books.

I will never, ever run out of good books to read-- especially if I keep going to the author events at The Poisoned Pen!

Celebrating Mysteries: To Protect and Serve

We're celebrating Native American Heritage Month here at Kittling: Books, and this week, the party is in honor of four authors who write books featuring Native American police officers in Canada and the United States.

If you're a fan of this sub-genre, feel free to chime in with your own personal favorites, and if you're new to this type of mystery, I hope I pique your interest enough to add a book or two to your wishlists. Let the celebration begin!

Stan Jones

Stan Jones has lived most of his life in Alaska, the setting of his books. He won several awards as an investigative journalist covering such stories as the Exxon Valdez oil spill and another series of articles that led to impeachment proceedings against one of Alaska's governors. It's obvious that he loves the Arctic landscape from reading his biography on his website:

"I spent a pleasant but basically aimless life until I moved to the Inupiat Eskimo village of Kotzebue in my late twenties.  I found the lovely, barren Arctic landscape absolutely mesmerizing, the extreme climate a joy, and the Native culture fascinating.  I landed Bush planes on the sea ice, drove snowmachines over the tundra, hunted moose and caribou, and once helped paddle a sealskin umiaq in pursuit of a bowhead whale on the Chukchi Sea off Point Hope."

His series of four books features Alaska State Trooper Nathan Active, an Inupiak, who's assigned to his village of birth after being raised by a white couple in Anchorage, Alaska. I love these books for their strong plots, interesting characters, fascinating native culture, and their incredible sense of place. The series: White Sky, Black Ice (1999), Shaman Pass (2003), Frozen Sun (2008), and Village of the Ghost Bear (2009).

Here's what Publishers Weekly had to say about White Sky, Black Ice:

The hero of Jones's promising first novel is Nathan Active, an Alaska state trooper. He is an Inupiat, but was given away by his mother when he was a baby, and raised by a white couple in Anchorage. Now he knows little of his background, and feels torn between two worlds. Nathan's bafflement hasn't been helped by his work assignment in Chukchi, the town in the rural northwestern corner of Alaska where he was born and where his birth mother still lives. The Inupiat townsfolk there have welcomed the opening of the Gray Wolf copper mine, as it provides jobs for young people. The number of wife-beatings and liquor-related offenses has declined dramatically. But now two local men have died in the same week, each of a gunshot wound in the throat. Locals assume that the deaths were suicides, especially as one of the young men belonged to a family whose members are subject to a curse. Nathan is not convinced-- even in suicide-prone Chukchi, men don't usually shoot themselves in the Adam's apple.

James D. Doss

Until his retirement, author James D. Doss worked at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Now he lives in Taos, New Mexico.

Doss's series features Ute police officer Charlie Moon in Grant Creek, Colorado. The series currently numbers sixteen (or it will in November when Coffin Man is published). The first four books are: The Shaman Sings (1994), The Shaman Laughs (1995), The Shaman's Bones (1997), and The Shaman's Game (1998).

Since Charlie Moon is only a minor character in The Shaman Sings, let's take a look at what Amazon says about The Shaman Laughs:

What Tony Hillerman has done for the Navajo tribes of the American Southwest, James Doss seems intent on pulling off for the Utes of Colorado--creating mysteries that are as unique and different as the people and the lands they inhabit. His second book about Ute policeman Charlie Moon is full of dark myth and modern murder, all about the means people invent to fill up the holes in their lives.

Stanley Evans

Stanley Evans is a writer, a surveyor, and a deep-sea fisherman. His series features Silas Seaweed, a Coast Salish beat cop on the streets of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. Seaweed is known to get things done-- if not always by following police procedure.

The five books in the series are: Seaweed on the Street (2005), Seaweed on Ice (2006), Seaweed Under Water (2007), Seaweed on the Rocks (2008), and Seaweed in the Soup (2009).

Here's a brief synopsis of Seaweed on the Street:

The first in the series, Seaweed on the Street introduces a new character for mystery lovers: Coast Salish street cop Silas Seaweed. A billionaire's daughter with an unsavory past has mysteriously disappeared. Silas Seaweed, a savvy, street-smart investigator based in Victoria, B.C., is put on the case. His search for the young woman leads him on a trail of murder, greed and obsessive violence. Overcoming such obstacles as a pair of ruthless cocaine dealers, the murder of key witnesses and a failed attempt on his own life, Seaweed perseveres in his quest to bring a master criminal to justice, his journey taking him from the darker side of Victoria's downtown to Nevada's glittering casinos. Blends modern-day crime detection with age-old Coast Salish ritual.

Susan Slater

Susan Slater has lived in the Southwest for over thirty years and works for a government contractor.

Her three books-- The Pumpkin Seed Massacre (1999), Yellow Lies (2000), and Thunderbird (2002)-- feature Benson Pecos, a reservation medical investigator from Tewa Pueblo and Tommy Spottedhorse, a tribal police officer in New Mexico.

I have the first two books in the series sitting on my to-be-read shelves, and I hope it doesn't take me much longer to get to them!

Library Journal says this about The Pumpkin Seed Massacre:

Newcomer Slater successfully taps into the complex issues facing Native American communities in this dynamic mystery set primarily in one of New Mexico's Tewa Pueblos. Handsome Ben Pecos has straddled Anglo and Native cultures since the death of his mother, an alcoholic Tewa artist, spending summers with his grandmother at the pueblo and winters with adoptive parents in Utah. While considering graduate school, Ben accepts an internship at the Tewa Pueblo's medical clinic and is immediately drawn into a major medical disaster. A plague-like epidemic has begun spreading among New Mexico's residents and tourists, sending the nation into a fevered panic. As Ben is drawn into the orbit of the strange illness (presumably caused by tainted pumpkin seeds), he begins to fall for Julie Conlin, a local TV reporter. This is a wonderful book with loveable heroes.

You know-- every time I write one of these posts, I want to put down the book I'm currently reading and pick up one of the ones I've just talked about! I hope you feel the same way. Join me next week when I'll continue celebrating mysteries with Native American characters!