Greasy Bend

Starred review from May 6, 2019
Set in the Oklahoma countryside, where it’s possible to track a car by the cloud of dust it’s raising on a gravel road, Lackey’s excellent sequel to 2017’s Nail’s Crossing charts the investigations of two different but equally able cops. Clever and resourceful Bill Maytubby, a Chickasaw Lighthorse police sergeant, is after the gang that shot down his boyhood pal while robbing a casino. Meanwhile, blunt and roughhewn Hannah Bond, a Johnson County deputy, aches to solve the brutal killing of her elderly friend Alice Lang. As the two separately gather evidence by watching the comings and goings of suspicious people, they discover that both murders were committed by the same gang of drug and gun runners, people who will happily kill anyone they catch snooping around. The accumulation of detail may be a bit hard to follow for those who don’t share the officers’ personal commitment, but they are convincingly thorough, and the two of them—along with Bill’s lover, Jill Milton—are likable, formidable characters. This one’s definitely a keeper. Agent: Richard Curtis, Curtis Agency.

June 1, 2019
The governors of Oklahoma's Chickasaw Nation have had a couple of years now to get used to having the engaging, eccentric Bill Maytubby as a tribal policeman. They could do worse. He's a good cop. In 2017's Nail's Crossing, he solved a perplexing murder in between barefoot runs in the park, and now he, along with Johnston County Detective Hannah Bond, must solve two exceptionally cruel murders. Alice, a retired bookkeeper, is shot and left by a river, and electrician Tom Hewitt is gunned down in the midst of a casino robbery. There's plenty of action?Bond dives into a freezing river for evidence, and there's a nicely choreographed shoot-out. Plus, there's an abundance of good writing?"the bobbing horse head of an oil pumpjack." The best news of all is that Maytubby is as wacky as ever, chomping health food while he tracks the killers. This series is a sleeper, well deserving of a larger readership.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)