Customer Reviews

Dead Weight: Posadas County Mystery (Posadas County Mysteries (Paperback))

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

Sheriff Bill Gastner has been part of Posedas County, New Mexico for his entire life and part of the sheriff's department since 1966. Now a septuagenarian, Bill nears retirement waiting for the upcoming election to select his replacement.

However, instead of gracefully fading into the background, Bill finds one of the most difficult cases of his illustrious career dumped on his lap. An internal investigation of a member of his staff, Deputy Tom Pasquale is accused of more than just destroying the rental property he leases. Apparently, the county commissioners have received a note from a concerned citizen claiming that Pasquale has hit on Mexican nationals for $100 every time he stops them.

Bill also has a potential homicide to deal to investigate. One of the battling Sissons, stars of the local family fight scene dubbed the "Jim and Grace" show, died in an apparent misfortune. Did Grace finally kill Jim or did a grotesque accident really occur?

The latest release in Steven F. Havill's great police procedural, DEAD WEIGHT, is another superb entry in the Sheriff Gastner collection. The two prime inquiries are fully developed because the charcaters seem more like flesh and blood than part of a novel, even for someone reading their first book in the series. The story line centers on the residents of the county and the surrounding landscape, although the police investigations are in full bloom. Anyone who wants a cerebral character-based plot, the Gastner novels, in which the first few are being reprinted, is must reading.

Harriet Klausner

Sheriff Bill Gastner is a calm reasoning man in a knee jerk reaction world. He has been a law enforcement officer in his Posadas, New Mexico territory for a long time and he knows it well and he also understands the human's weaknesses of the people that live and die in his community.

He is called to the scene of a backhoe accident in the yard of a man who is known to have frequent altercations with a shrew of a wife. A woman that no one likes including most of her children who have flown the coop as soon as their wings could spread. There is something, just a little something off about the scene of the accident and Bill as well as his deputies slowly put together a picture of a tricky homicide rather than an accident.

Adding to this problem Gastner has been notified by a few councilmen that they have received letters anonymously charging one of his best young up and coming deputies of receiving kickbacks from Mexican nationals at traffic stops. Again, Gastner does not rush to judgment. He knows his deputies and he considers the problems from all the aspects, from the recipients of the letters, the timing of the letters to the actual reports of the letters and it doesn't stay a puzzle for very long.

Although Bill Gastner's reflexes are not what they were, he is nearing retirement; he uses his training, his cunning and most of all his reason. Gastner's department has excellent scene of the crime procedures although there is no CSIing going on. Havill evokes small town America under going changes as all America is. Gastner helps keep a balance.

There is a pattern in the letters, the backhoe death and it emerges because the characters in the stories act true to themselves and they reveal eventually the truth.
Oh, if life could imitate art.

I absolutely love the Bill Gastner series. I have read a few unsatisfying novels lately and this one was a real joy.

Gastner is the nearly 70-year-old insomniac sherrif of a small town in New Mexico. He consumes great quantities of coffee and Mexican food while he juggles a homocide investigation, a mysterious accusation against one of his officers and a landlord/renter dispute. Politics and good police work don't necessarily go hand-in-hand, but Gastner makes it work anyway.

Havill's characters remind me very much of those of fellow New Mexican author Tony Hillerman. For me, this is very high praise since I absolutely love the Leaphorn/Chee novels. If Havill and Hillerman are par for the course in the world of New Mexican authors than I am going to looking for more of them. Truly a delightful read.

I give this one a grade of A.

This is New Mexico @ its best. You can feel the heat, taste the dust. No wisps in the willows or baying of other-wordly night creatures. These are two-legged predators. Plain talk, plain people--you know them. You can see them. You can hear them. If you want rockets & bombs bursting in air, go somewhere else. Otherwise hunker down to Posadas County. Meet the folks, heroes & villains--all as likeable & as ornery as the next. Havill is better than a Chamber of Commerce travel pitch. I actually look forward to going to this gawd-forsaken place. The series (8 & counting) deserves someone to unearth this guy. Bill Gastner is an American Morse--crusty & 70-years tired. Havill writes a cozy procedural. He's good. Try him. I don't give 5 stars.