A Ghost of a Chance (Sheriff Dan Rhodes Mysteries, No. 10) [Hardcover]

Bill Crider (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 14, 2000

In this tenth installment of the Sheriff Dan Rhodes series, the Blacklin County Texas law enforcer is back to solve even more mysteries. Some of the most amusing sequences in Crider's Blacklin county mysteries are set in the jailhouse, and star the ongoing word battles between its two septuagarian denizens, Hack the dispatcher and Lawton, the jailer. This time no one at the jailhouse is laughing and Rhodes has a new problem. Not only is the jailhouse itself rumored to be haunted, but a mysterious corpse is found in an open grave in the neighboring town. Rhodes uses his laid back sleuthing skills to find the answers to these puzzling events, which Crider depicts with his usual humor, suspense and small town ambience.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Blacklin County, Tex., which includes the decrepit little town of Clearview, is where Sheriff Dan Rhodes has kept order in nine previous mysteries (Death by Accident, etc.). Clearview is hardly a hotbed of crime, and the middle-aged sheriff's laid-back style seems a perfect fit. Neither the appearance of ghosts, first at the jail, then in a local cemetery; nor the body of a murdered man found in a grave newly dug for another body; nor the uproar over cemetery thefts raised by the Clearview Sons and Daughters of Texas, a historical preservation group, is enough to get Rhodes too worked up. With quiet good humor, courage and a direct approach, Rhodes goes about the business of soothing, questioning or confronting as needs be. Rhodes's septuagenarian aides, Hack and Lawton, provide information as well as critical (and comical) commentary. A pair of petty and incompetent criminals, Rapper and Nellie, resurface to plague Rhodes again. And the county's newly successful romance novelist, Vernell Lindsey, can't seem to keep her goats fenced in or her neighbors from getting nosey. In some novels, two murders, a shootout, thefts and a drug factory would send the violence quotient over the top, but folksy Dan Rhodes handles it all with pleasing and entertaining aplomb.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Amid rumors that the Blacklin County jail is haunted, someone discovers a body in the neighboring town. In his 11th mystery, Sheriff Dan Rhodes tackles both problems in his own inimitable way. A solid addition to a long-running series
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Minotaur Books; 1st edition (July 14, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312208898
• ISBN-13: 978-0312208899
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,477,052 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I was born and brought up in Mexia (that's pronounced Muh-HAY-uh by the natives), Texas, went to college at The University of Texas and North Texas State University, and taught high school and college classes for many years. In 1992 I retired as Chair of the Division of English and Fine Arts at Alvin Community College, in Alvin, Texas. I'm married to the lovely Judy, and we have two grown children, Angela, who's an attorney in San Francisco, and Allen, who's in the music business in Austin. Other than that, I'm a pretty boring guy.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Reviewing: "A Ghost Of A Chance" by Bill Crider, February 21, 2009

By 

Kevin Tipple (Plano, Texas) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: A Ghost of a Chance (Sheriff Dan Rhodes Mysteries, No. 10) (Hardcover)

This tenth in the series opens with concerns by some that the Blacklin County Jail is haunted. Sheriff Rhodes doesn't believe it but, as the Dispatcher Hank Jensen points out, the guys back in the cells believe "and that's all that matters." (Page 1) Rhodes doesn't believe much in computers either though he does admit that occasionally they do help a little bit.

It's only fitting on a dark and stormy day and with talk of ghosts that Sheriff Rhodes gets called out to the cemetery. Clyde Ballinger has called in to report a dead man in one of the graves at the cemetery. The grave had been opened for Travis McCoy and the burial is planned for later in the day. But, the man in the open grave is Ty Berry who had been the President of the Clearview Sons and Daughters of Texas. The group was devoted to the preservation of the history of the city of Clearview and Blacklin County and frequently found itself at odds with the local citizenry on one issue or another. Preserving the past costs money and a lot of folks simply don't care about history or the past.

Recently somebody has been looting the twelve cemeteries in the county and Ty Berry was organizing volunteer patrols, pushing commissioners for security for the cemeteries, and lots of other things that annoyed some folks. Shot dead and dumped in the open grave, his murder is going to cause political repercussions for Rhodes. He is going to have to talk to people who aren't going to want to deal with the messy issue of murder because it is so beneath their station in life while others either hated the man or just didn't care and don't have the time or patience to be bothered.

Then there is the pesky problem that the motorcycles are back. People are reporting the rumbling of tail pipes which in all likelihood means one thing - Rapper is back.


Weaving these threads and others author Bill Crider creates another solid entry in the Sheriff Rhodes series. No character development or evolution of the main or secondary characters happens in this cozy style novel. And no forensics of the style they do on television in a splashy forty-five minutes. No, this book and the series as a whole is old fashioned police work where the guilty are usually caught by way of a web of lies.

Progress may have come to the East Texas County in the form of Wal-Mart and downtown Clearview might be dying because of it, but the police work is old school investigation led by Sheriff Rhodes. Rhodes digs into the case by frequently asking questions of characters we have seen many times before in other books in the series, poking around crime scenes and elsewhere, and knowing folks. Some live, some die, and progress continues to whittle away at the Clearview of Rhodes youth and yet he continues on dealing with just the things he can control and trying not to worry about the things he can't. There is a lesson in all that along with another good story in a series that is steadily good book after book.


Kevin R. Tipple (copyright) 2009

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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Re: Mild-mannered sheriff saves the day, December 3, 2001

By 

Robyn Russell (Fairbanks, Alaska) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Ghost of a Chance (Sheriff Dan Rhodes Mysteries, No. 10) (Paperback)

This was my first Dan Rhoades mystery and I enjoyed it so
much that I decided to read the rest of the series. The tone of
the book is quiet and funny, but the plot keeps you guessing
right up to the end. Who killed Ty Berry, head of one of the local (and feuding) historical societies? Who or what is haunting
the cemetary and the jail? Why are heavy pieces of statuary going missing from the local cemetaries and who is taking them? It's up to intrepid Sheriff Dan and his merry band of oddball deputies to ferret out the truth among the even odder inhabitants of Blacklin
County. Even if you've never been to Texas, you will recognize the situations Dan gets into and the people he has to put up with. Understated and very good.

6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fun down home mystery, June 19, 2000

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Ghost of a Chance (Sheriff Dan Rhodes Mysteries, No. 10) (Hardcover)

The sheriff of Blacklin County, Texas is not having an easy time of it because the five prisoners incarcerated in the jail insist the place is haunted. Sheriff Dan Rhodes and his employees, Hack Jensen and Lawton do not believe in ghosts, but wonder what is going on when the prisoners start studiously read the Bible.

Dan's life becomes a bit weirder when he learns that a dead person has been found occupying a freshly dug grave in the cemetery. The grave was originally dug for Terry McCoy, but the corpse is that of Ty Berry, shot in the head with a .22. Although there are no further clues at the cemetery, Dan sees a couple of fleeting shadows out of the corners of his eyes. Soon the townsfolk begin believing that Ty haunts the cemetery. In addition to catching a mortal killer and other criminals, Dan needs to keep his fellow citizens calm and quiet while he and his staff solve the cases.

Bill Crider has so fully developed the characters in the Dan Rhodes mysteries with each new novel, readers feel they are visiting dear long term friends. Of course these buddies are quite eccentric. A GHOST OF A CHANCE, the tenth tale in this down home regional series, is amusing, interesting, and filled with local color. The hero is an amiable Texan who is everyone's pal until he makes an arrest. Fans of the sub-genre will enjoy this visit to Blacklin County.

Harriet Klausner