BITTER RECOIL

Pregnant Cecilia Burgess wasn't knocked off the San Estevan mountain road by a hit-and-run driver: she was tossed out of a moving pickup driven by five teenagers who are now being systematically eliminated. Aging, portly Posados County Undersheriff Bill Gastner, visiting his former deputy Estelle Reyes-Gutman in northern New Mexico, finds himself pulled into a revenge case strongly reminiscent of his debut in Heartshot (1991)—except that there's all too little doubt about who pulled the trigger (superannuated hippie boyfriend H. T. Finn? juvenile jailbird Robert Arajanian? alcoholic Father Nolan Parris?) or why. After poor marksmanship leaves one victim alive to testify, Estelle and Bill close in on the killer—only to set the stage for some more gunplay, a forest fire, and a rootin'-tootin' showdown in a Navaho mineshaft. Bill remains appealing in this dusty tour—more action than mystery/detection—of the Land of Enchantment.