Half in Love with Artful Death

Half in Love with Artful Death PDF Author: Bill Crider
Publisher: Minotaur Books
ISBN: 1250039681
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Get Book Here

Book Description
The local community college and an antique dealer team up to have a workshop for artists. One local man, Burt Collins, isn't fond of the art, and he isn't fond of having the artists in town. Sheriff Dan Rhodes is called to the antique store because Collins has been accused of vandalizing some paintings. When Rhodes arrives, two men are restraining Collins. But before Rhodes can take Collins into custody, a near riot breaks out. Rhodes gets the situation under control with the help of college math instructor and wannabe cop Seepy Benton. Later that day Rhodes has to help the county animal control officer round up some runaway donkeys, and that evening there's a robbery at a local convenience store. After looking into the robbery, Rhodes goes by to see Collins and talk to him about the vandalism. Collins isn't talking because he's been killed, his head bashed in with a bust of Dale Earnhardt, Jr. Rhodes is faced with other problems, too: a naked woman in a roadside park and a gang of meth-cookers. It seems as if a Sheriff's work is never done. Half in Love with Artful Death is the 21st book in this entertaining and original series. It's the perfect time for mystery fans to discover this Texan star of the genre, Bill Crider.

Half in Love with Artful Death

Half in Love with Artful Death PDF Author: Bill Crider
Publisher: Minotaur Books
ISBN: 1250039681
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Get Book Here

Book Description
The local community college and an antique dealer team up to have a workshop for artists. One local man, Burt Collins, isn't fond of the art, and he isn't fond of having the artists in town. Sheriff Dan Rhodes is called to the antique store because Collins has been accused of vandalizing some paintings. When Rhodes arrives, two men are restraining Collins. But before Rhodes can take Collins into custody, a near riot breaks out. Rhodes gets the situation under control with the help of college math instructor and wannabe cop Seepy Benton. Later that day Rhodes has to help the county animal control officer round up some runaway donkeys, and that evening there's a robbery at a local convenience store. After looking into the robbery, Rhodes goes by to see Collins and talk to him about the vandalism. Collins isn't talking because he's been killed, his head bashed in with a bust of Dale Earnhardt, Jr. Rhodes is faced with other problems, too: a naked woman in a roadside park and a gang of meth-cookers. It seems as if a Sheriff's work is never done. Half in Love with Artful Death is the 21st book in this entertaining and original series. It's the perfect time for mystery fans to discover this Texan star of the genre, Bill Crider.

That Old Scoundrel Death

That Old Scoundrel Death PDF Author: Bill Crider
Publisher: Minotaur Books
ISBN: 1250165636
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 225

Get Book Here

Book Description
Beloved Texas Sheriff Dan Rhodes is back with his final murder case in That Old Scoundrel Death. When a man is run off the road by a thug with a snake tattooed around his neck, Sheriff Dan Rhodes knows it's his duty to stop and help out. The grateful victim gives his name as Cal Stinson, on his way to the nearby town of Thurston to take a look at the old school building before the city tears it down. The next day, Cal Stinson turns up again. Only this time, he's dead. His body is found in the dilapidated school that's about to be razed, and the woman who let Cal onto the premises claims he gave his name as Bruce Wayne. Whoever is he is, he was shot in the back of the head, and a piece of chalk lies inches away from his hand, under a lone line on the chalkboard, his last words unfinished. Between not-so-bright hoodlums who can't seem to stay on the right side of the law, powerful families in town who are ready to go to battle over whether the old school should come down, and trying futilely to get private detective Seepy Benton to stop making mountains of mole hills, Sheriff Rhodes is beginning to wonder if retirement might be as good as it sounds.

Survivors Will Be Shot Again

Survivors Will Be Shot Again PDF Author: Bill Crider
Publisher: Minotaur Books
ISBN: 1466890827
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Get Book Here

Book Description
There's no such thing as a day off for a sheriff. Even in a small Texas town like Clearview, there's always something going on for law enforcement. Still, most days don't involve a run-in with an alligator. And that's not the worst of Sheriff Dan Rhodes's troubles, either. There's a dead man in Billy Bacon's barn, though Bacon swears he doesn't know how the body got there. Rhodes is a bit skeptical, given that the intruder has been shot twice and that Bacon has recently removed a sign from a fencepost near the barn, a sign that says "Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be shot again." The citizens of Clearview have been complaining about a rash of thefts, and Rhodes suspects that the dead man may have been involved in them. But before he can solve that crime, he also has to deal with a number of other puzzling crimes in the community, ranging from a holdup at a convenience store to the disappearance of a loaf of bread. And then there's the dang gator. In Bill Crider's Survivors Will Be Shot Again, Sheriff Dan Rhodes learns that, as the old saying goes, crime doesn't pay. But it also doesn't take a vacation.

Between the Living and the Dead

Between the Living and the Dead PDF Author: Bill Crider
Publisher: Minotaur Books
ISBN: 125003969X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 270

Get Book Here

Book Description
Life is never easy for Texas Sheriff Dan Rhodes. When he is called in the middle of the night to investigate gunshots at a haunted house, Rhodes finds the body of meth dealer Neil Foshee. Recently released from jail, Foshee has his fair share of potential murderers, including former girlfriend Vicki, her new boyfriend, the nephew of Clearview's mayor, and Foshee's criminal cousins Earl and Louie. Complicating matters is Seepy Benton, the community college math professor who has a new summer job. He's founded Clearview Paranormal Investigations and wants to solve the murder by communing with Foshee's ghost. But when he connects with something else instead and a second body is found, Rhodes is left with more questions than ever. Who's the dead person? How long has the body been hidden? Is Benton really able to communicate with ghosts? And most importantly: What, if anything, does the body have to do with Neil Foshee's death? Between the Living and the Dead, Bill Crider's latest installment in the critically-acclaimed Sheriff Dan Rhodes mystery series, finds Rhodes dealing with ghost hunters, runaway bulls, and assorted low-level crimes, including prosecuting people who don't use their turn signals. It's all in a day's work in Clearview, Texas.

Dead, to Begin With

Dead, to Begin With PDF Author: Bill Crider
Publisher: Minotaur Books
ISBN: 1250078539
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Get Book Here

Book Description
When a wealthy recluse joins his small Texas community to lead the restoration of an old opera house before dying in a suspicious fall, Sheriff Dan Rhodes investigates long-ago motives while navigating ridiculous local troubles.

Winning Can Be Murder - A Dan Rhodes Mystery

Winning Can Be Murder - A Dan Rhodes Mystery PDF Author: Bill Crider
Publisher: Crossroad Press
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 218

Get Book Here

Book Description
It's been a while since Sheriff Dan Rhodes's football days, but things haven't really changed, at least not with state playoffs coming up and excitement for the local high school team heating up to a fever pitch. But then coach Brady Meredith is found shot to death in his car, and his murder leads to troublesome rumors concerning illegal betting, black market steroids and the sheriff's old nemesis, a biker named Rapper, who has reappeared in Blacklin County. Too many coincidences for Rhodes's comfort. Especially when another corpse makes it a second down for a killer determined to lead Sheriff Rhodes into a game of sudden death.

Booked for a Hanging - A Dan Rhodes Mystery

Booked for a Hanging - A Dan Rhodes Mystery PDF Author: Bill Crider
Publisher: Crossroad Press
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 216

Get Book Here

Book Description
The versatile mystery novelist Bill Crider has created a pantheon of marvelous characters, but none is more real, warm, and thoroughly delightful than Sheriff Dan Rhodes of Blacklin County, Texas. In his sixth adventure, Rhodes is confronted with what seems at first to be a suicide: the body of a man newly arrived in the county is found hanged in the dilapidated building he has taken over for his business. Simon Graham was a rare-book dealer. If it seems unlikely to find such an arcane entrepreneur in this extremely rural and sparsely populated part of Texas, it becomes less strange when it turns out that Graham was more con man than bibliophile. The presumed suicide begins to look more and more like murder when several newcomers swoop down on the scene and try to beat out one another to find a reputedly valuable rare book that Graham was rumored to have among his collection of hardly worthwhile items. Although Rhodes's two attenuated and eccentric jailhouse employees have gone overboard for the magic of the department's new computer, the steady, if put-upon, Rhodes and his clear-eyed observations of human nature have invariably been more useful to the solution of a crime—and that is still true in the case of the hanged book dealer.

Murder Most Fowl

Murder Most Fowl PDF Author: Bill Crider
Publisher: Crossroad Press
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 215

Get Book Here

Book Description
Following Booked for a Hanging, Anthony Award-winner Bill Crider brings back his amiable, computer-phobic sheriff Dan Rhodes to investigate a murder that may or may not be related to a recent wave of emu-rustling. For an officer of the law, Blacklin County, Texas, used to be pretty peaceful, but now, what with the emu-rustling, cockfights, and protests at the new Wal-Mart store—not to mention murder—Sheriff Dan Rhodes has his hands full. Hit hard by the collapse of his little hardware store, Elijah ("Lige") Ward has taken to chaining himself to the Wal-Mart doors and generally making a nuisance of himself. And when Lige's dead body turns up, floating down a river in a portable toilet, Rhodes finds he has quite a case to investigate. What was the connection between Lige and chickens? Lige and the Palm Club? And was he involved in the area's emu thefts? It seems that raising emus ("taste like steak, not chicken") is a booming business, so much so that emu ("calmer than ostriches and more resistant to disease") are being stolen left, right, and center by would-be emu ranchers with little respect for the law. From theft to murder, the local crime spree seems unstoppable. But with a little help from the computer foisted on him by aging deputies Hack and Lawton, plus some good old-fashioned detective work, Rhodes just may be able to straighten out his county.

Date of Disappearance

Date of Disappearance PDF Author: M. Allen Cunningham
Publisher: Atelier26 Books
ISBN: 9780989302371
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
Painting modern America in saturated colors, this collection of short stories explores the passions and compulsions at the core of our national identity: those qualities that propel us forward or hold us back; that make us strangers to ourselves and others even while we pine for connection; the ways we cope with the inescapable enormity of our nation's geography. A marlin swims circles in a luminous backyard pool; a small-town surgeon broods from the Olympus of his hilltop house, watched all the while by his neighbors below; a knife salesman plies blades of mythic sharpness while crisscrossing a crazed North American landscape like a mad Paul Bunyan; a young man in rural Arkansas nestles into a satellite dish; and a grandfather's body lies in state amid Annie Oakley's last buffalo kill, General Patton's Persian rug, and countless other oddments of a legendary America. Phenomenally imaginative, skewed, and hyperbolical, these stories are honed to cut through the blur of our times.

Murder in the Air

Murder in the Air PDF Author: Bill Crider
Publisher: Minotaur Books
ISBN: 1429929340
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 269

Get Book Here

Book Description
There's a big stink in Blacklin County, and everyone seems to think Sheriff Dan Rhodes should do something about it. The smell is coming from the giant chicken farm owned by Lester Hamilton. Rhodes sees this as a matter for the state's air-quality enforcement agency, not the county sheriff. That all changes, however, when Hamilton is found dead, floating in an old rock pit not far from the town of Clearview. Hamilton had probably been engaged in the act of noodling for catfish, which is not only highly dangerous but illegal in Texas. Rhodes suspects that Hamilton didn't die by accident, though. There are plenty of suspects, including an eccentric community college professor and one of his colleagues, who lives near the chicken farm and has to wear a respirator mask to ward off the smell. Also, someone known in the county as Robin Hood is going around shooting arrows into utility poles as a protest. When semi-nude protestors arrive at the chicken farm, things really begin to get out of hand. Filled with fun, mayhem, and memorable characters, Murder in the Air is a wonderful addition to this very excellent series. Award-winning author Bill Crider shows again that he is one of the most talented and entertaining mystery writers around.