The Right Side of Wrong

May 27, 2013
Violence is on the rise in the small town of Center Spring, Tex., in Wortham’s exciting third Red River mystery (after 2012’s Burrows), this one set in 1966. Constable Cody Parker—along with his uncle, Constable Ned Parker, and John Washington, a black deputy sheriff—discovers that his remote area near the Oklahoma border is becoming a pipeline for some murderous and unrepentant drug dealers, and further, that there might be an informant within the sheriff’s department. Cody unwisely decides to follow some of the dealers across the Mexican border. Folksy neighbors, good old boys, and Bible-thumping grandmas all speak with a twang so thick it could only be cut with a chainsaw. Two preteen cousins, Top and Pepper, a tomboy, give new meaning to the term “reckless endangerment.” Readers will want to see a lot more of the (mostly) law-abiding Parker clan. Agent: Jeanie Pantelakis, Sullivan Maxx Literary Agency.

Starred review from June 1, 2013

An ambush by unknown assailants almost kills Constable Cody Parker one winter night in his rural east Texas district, but he is rescued by Tom Bell, a mysterious older stranger who exudes a lawman's confidence. Fast-forward a few months, and Cody is healing, but a crime wave has hit Red River. The year is 1966, and a series of incidents indicate that the burgeoning marijuana trade is looking for a toehold upstate. A local who stole a bag of dope is killed. Eager to catch the killers, Cody chases them in a foolhardy drive to a more treacherous river, the Rio Grande, and Tom may need to rescue him again. VERDICT Wortham's third entry in his addictive Texas procedural set in the 1960s (after Burrows and The Rock Hole) is a deceptively meandering tale of family and country life bookended by a dramatic opening and conclusion. C.J. Box fans would like this title; for the Texas storyteller frame, pair it up with Milton T. Burton (see Series Lineup below).

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