IF IT ISN'T ONE THING...

A fatal truck crash tips Undersheriff Estelle Reyes-Guzman into a series of related and unrelated felonies in Posadas County, New Mexico.

It’s pretty clear that trucker Alijandro Gutierrez hit the pickup driven by Martín Sisneros—killing Sisneros, setting free the horse he was carrying from his trailer, and littering the intersection with the wood Gutierrez was hauling—because he was drunk. What’s not clear is what Sisneros, who was also drunk, was doing in the first place behind the wheel of that truck, which was registered to Quentin Smith, a ranch hand who’d been assigned to transport El Kazzar Kobi Dancer from Nebraska to a veterinarian far away who was trusted by Smith’s imperious boss, Patty Jorgenson, to treat the stallion. Estelle, who’s scheduled shortly to follow her old boss, Sheriff Bill Gastner, into retirement, prepares to rouse her troops to investigate. But a serious complication arises when Posadas County Deputy Dwayne Bishop, responding to a domestic violence call, shoots Raul Cardona dead after Cardona seriously wounded both his wife, Mindy, and Bishop himself. At least that’s how it looks at first. As usual, Havill unfolds his story at a leisurely pace that allocates so much time to reintroducing the franchise regulars and their families and friends and law-enforcement colleagues that the investigation into Martín Sisneros’ unaccountable presence in Quentin Smith’s RAM inevitably gets pushed to the side. But then who reads this warmhearted series for the mysteries, anyway?

If it isn’t one walk-on, it’s another.