The Right Side of Wrong (Texas Red River Mysteries, 3) - Hardcover

A gritty, dark, and suspenseful Western with a final explosive showdown that kept me turning the pages late into the night to see who would survive.--Jamie Freveletti, internationally bestselling author of Dead Asleep

The mid-1960s are a transition period in rural Texas. Moonshiners are running afoul of the drug trade, and law enforcement is caught in the crossfire. Constable Cody Parker of Center Springs is ambushed and left for dead on a desolate country road. He's rescued by Tom Bell, a likably dangerous octogenarian newcomer who prefers not to discuss his past. Cody's uncle, Ned Parker is also a lawman. Two well-known moonshiners are found in a shallow grave a couple months after Cody's ambush. The usually peaceful little town seems to be the center of a turf war that will require the combined effort and firepower of the Parkers, Tom Bell, and assorted other carefully fleshed-out secondary characters. Though much of the novel is written in the third person, a portion is narrated by Top Parker, Ned's 10-year-old grandson. Top is an endearing narrator, full of childlike wonder, which is gradually being diluted by the realities of the adult world. In that sense, the novel may remind readers of Joe Lansdale's superb The Bottoms (2000). A very good mystery that will also transport readers to a different era. -- Wes Lukowsky--Booklist

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 (afterBurrows 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).--Library Journal

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. (July)--Publishers Weekly