SHIFTY'S BOYS

Another excellent Mick Hardin thriller set in rural eastern Kentucky.

Mick Hardin, of the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division, once again finds himself back home in Appalachia, freeloading on his sister, Linda, the no-nonsense county sheriff, while he recovers from a roadside bombing. When the county’s heroin kingpin (or, it being a small place, the county’s heroin princeling) is found dead in a vacant downtown lot in the county seat, the city police are disinclined to investigate, on the “good riddance” principle of rough justice. Linda, who’s occupied with her reelection campaign—and the awful, endless round of glad handing, small favors, and pancake breakfasts it requires—is glad not to have the case on her plate. But when the dealer’s mother, the misanthropic and well-armed Shifty Kissick (a former love of Mick and Linda’s late father), asks Mick to investigate, he feels obligated to take a look...and the cycle of violence and revenge begins. As in The Killing Hills (2021), Offutt has fashioned a mystery plot that’s fast-paced, efficiently plotted, atmospheric, and compelling, but what again distinguishes the book is the author’s command of and affection for the setting and the people who live there. Come for the thriller, by all means; it delivers nicely. But stay for, and linger in, the marvelous incidentals and atmospherics: arguments about mall names; lore about snakes and birds and mushrooms; descriptions of a local shade-tree tinkerer’s Slinky-like version of a perpetual motion machine.

Terrific characters; taut suspense. Another winner from Offutt.