THE DEVIL'S HATBAND

As the lowest-ranking member of Denver's Bail Bondsman's Row, CF Floyd doesn't see much big money. But he's offered a serious bonus for retrieving Brenda Mathison and the unspecified document she's run off with from her eco-terrorist buddies of the Grand River Tribe—and the pot only gets bigger when he finds her dead, and her father, a federal judge, hires him to track down her killer. The most likely suspect is Grand River guru Dennis Deere, who plans to bring the region's cattle industry to its knees with a villainous toxin likely to be as fatal to cattle hands as to their four-legged charges. But CF also has to watch out for local gang leader Raymond Hicks, a.k.a. Razor D, whom he figures has trashed CF's prize '57 Bel Air and would like to do the same to its owner—especially after he sees that a witness to the vandalism won't have to wait around to die of some cattle toxin. Though his supporting cast is big without being distinctive—you may have lost track of the killer by the time he's unmasked—first-novelist Greer shows a piercing awareness of the countless kinds of racism that keep CF permanently behind the eight ball. Walter Mosley Lite, then, with big-sky action substituting for Mosley's sense of creeping urban nightmare. (Author tour)