Bag Limit

by Steven F. Havill Narrated by Rusty Nelson

Overview

Bill Gastner, the reluctant sheriff of Posadas County, New Mexico, anticipates his last few days in office will be uneventful. That is, until local teen Matt Baca drives drunkenly into the back of Gastner's cruiser, then flees into the night. His eventual capture turns tragic when the boy becomes irrationally violent and takes a fatal tumble into oncoming traffic. Adding to the tragedy, Matt's father is found dead in his tiny kitchen. Is this all a terrible coincidence, or is something more sinister afoot? The dead teen's fake ID troubles Gastner. He suspects it's why Matt Baca was so intent on avoiding arrest for drunken driving. His theory leads him to the toughest, deadliest couple of days of his career. This is a case that proves small town life can deliver big trouble. Still, Sheriff Gastner proves his mettle, and resolves it by using the common sense of an old warhorse, and the soothing powers of a green chile burrito.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Low-key and laconic to the point of being almost comatose, this latest mystery featuring immensely likable New Mexico Sheriff Bill Gastner (after 2000's Dead Weight) coasts admirably on its folksy charm for most of the rambling narrative. Unfortunately, crime fans with even the slightest taste for action are going to be fidgeting after the first hundred sluggish pages. Bill is days from retirement when Matt Baca, a local teen, drives drunkenly into the back of his police car. Other drunken kids, who are in the car with Matt, are unharmed. Matt takes off, but once caught simmers down. Then he becomes irrationally violent and escapes from custody, only to be hit and killed by an oncoming truck driving close to the edge of the road. The job of telling Matt's father, a career drunk named Sosimo, falls to Gastner the next morning. But that sad conversation never takes place. The boy's father is found dead, perhaps from a heart attack, though there are signs of a struggle in Sosimo's tiny kitchen. For 150 pages after the second death precious little else happens. Gastner's son shows up in a Corvette, the old cop ponders a second career as a livestock inspector in a location apparently rife with rustling, while the mystery of Matt's two state identification cards preys on his mind. One ID is real, and one is clearly a fake. At the close there's a neat conclusion to a case that has ambled along at its own pace, like rolling tumbleweed in a gentle wind. (Nov. 19) FYI: Poisoned Pen Press this fall is reissuing two earlier novels in the series, Privileged to Kill and Prolonged Exposure. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

It's work he was born to and he knows it, but now, after 32 years, Bill Gastner, sheriff of Posadas County, New Mexico, is eager to sing his swan song. He's 70, he's lost a step, gained a gut, and is visibly breath-challenged when climbing hills he used to take at a gallop. Time to let his friend and undersheriff, Bobby Torrez, claim the big desk and swivel chair to match. This being crime fiction, however, that can't happen without a last hurrah. So there's Bill in one of his favorite nooks on Santa Lucia Peak, contentedly contemplating a star-filled sky and a life reasonably well spent, when his parked police car is "T-boned" by a misdirected compact. At the wheel is one Matt Baca, teenager on a spree. Not really what you want to happen three days before the emancipating election. And things get worse. Young Matt is accidentally killed trying to escape arrest. And his father is killed in an apparent homicide. Soon enough, unavoidable signs of official corruption and cover-up become evident, involving people Bill likes. On the domestic front, too, unexpected complications mount. But complications are the staples of Bill Gastner's existence (Dead Weight, 2000, etc.), and he handles these in a style he's fine-tuned, remaining, as always, unhurried, unflapped, and unswervable when he thinks he's right. Nice, easygoing, entirely literate prose, and if the approach is a bit too "cozy" for some tastes, others will delight in dollops of local color and in Sheriff Bill, of course, who may well be the most endearing small-town lawman ever.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169668841
Publisher:	Books in Motion
Publication date:	09/15/2004
Series:	Bill Gastner , #9
Edition description:	Unabridged

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