When a car crash kills five teenagers and leaves $150,000 in cocaine, a septuagenarian undersheriff and his youthful sidekick must investigate before their New Mexico town explodes

Heartshot

Literature & Fiction

Havill, Steven F.

United States

St Martins Pr

Recovering from a double bypass, undersheriff Bill Gastner of Posadas County, New Mexico, becomes a reluctant hero as he investigates a series of crimes that have plagued the town.

Bitter Recoil

When Bitter Recoil (SMP, 1992), Steven F. Havill's second book featuring Undersheriff Bill Gastner of Posadas County, New Mexico, appeared, The Armchair Detective declared, "Assuming [Gastner] can continue to survive bullets and cigarettes, we can hope for many more." Well, the bullets are still flying but it's been five months, seven days, and some hours since the last cigarette when Gastner returns in his third adventure in Twice Buried. The sixty-something Gastner is getting ready to become padrino, or godfather, to the baby boy of his good friend and former deputy Estelle Reyes-Guzman. The ceremony, which will take place in a few weeks' time down in Old Mexico, would normally be the only thing on Gastner's mind. Lately, however, slow, dusty Posadas County has seen a lot of activity. There's the series of burglaries that have left the law enforcement officials with no leads. There's the deliberately set fire that destroyed Sheriff Holman's home. There's the escalating fistfights after the high school basketball games. And then eighty-six-year-old Anna Hocking is found dead at the bottom of her cellar stairs, and Gastner is sure it was no accident. At the same time, Estelle's great-uncle Reuben Fuentes starts carrying a gun again, and when Gastner goes out to talk to him, he learns that Reuben's three dogs were recently poisoned. When the body of the real estate agent Stuart Torkelson is found out near Reuben's place, and the sheriff wants to arrest the old man, Gastner calls in Estelle to protect her great-uncle's name. With Reuben's health deteriorating rapidly, Gastner knows he'll need all the help he can to get to prove Reuben's innocence and clear up the rash of lawlessness in Posadas County.

Twice Buried

Investigating a shooting that takes the life of a Posadas County deputy and wounds a young reporter, New Mexico Undersheriff Bill Gastner and his chief of detectives Estelle Reyes-Guzman have trouble finding clues

Before She Dies

After giving the stranger with the flat tire a ride into town, Undersheriff Bill Gastner decides that Wesley Crocker is a good man, but after a child's body is found, he must prove to the sheriff that his instincts are correct

Privileged to Kill

Recovering from surgery at his daughter's home in Michigan, Bill Gastner is called back to New Mexico because his house has been robbed, and when he arrives, he is stunned to also find a murder victim buried in his front yard.

Prolonged Exposure

Elderly Undersherrif Bill Gastner, in Posadas County, New Mexico, is about to lose his vaulable deputy when she goes to Minnesota with her doctor husband. But his life becomes far more complicated than the loss of Estelle when his boss, the sheriff, dies in a private plane crash piloted by his brother-in-law. Questions about why the men were flying (the sheriff hated to fly) in bad weather are overshadowed when the coroner finds that the pilot was killed by gun shots from the ground through the bottom of the plane, and the sheriff could not pilot it down safely.

Out of Season: An Undersheriff Bill Gastner Mystery

Minotaur Books

Parked high on a side road on the flank of the second highest peak in the San Cristobal mountains, peacefully surveying what soon would no longer be his responsibility as a sheriff, almost-seventy Bill Gastner could think that the night would be without incident. He'd be wrong. He doesn't foresee that a car full of alcohol-inspired adolescents would run into his automobile. Nor that the driver would take off and disappear in the nearby woods. Far from uneventful, this night turns out to be one of the toughest in Bill Gastner's many years as undersheriff and then sheriff in this sparsely populated border area of New Mexico. Gastner knows the young driver and his family - including the soon-to-be-sheriff, Bobby Torrez. Taken into custody from his home, the prisoner seems far too upset about being arrested. During the trip to the jail he makes a desperate attempt to flee again, an attempt that ends in his being hit and killed by an oncoming truck. Gastner has to dig deep to learn what is behind this tragic overreaction to a serious but unfortunately common DWI arrest. With the imminent election, the visit of Gastner's former deputy with her surgeon husband and their two very active young ones and the near riot the dead youth's neighbors stage when his father dies suddenly, the sheriff's last few days in office are not as uneventful as he had hoped. But Gastner stoically retrieves the law-enforcement tools he has packed away, including his talent for detection, his diplomacy, and his just plain common sense. He has used them all successfully for many years, and it's a joy to watch him use them one more time.

Bag Limit

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Mystery

Dead Weight: A Sheriff Bill Gastner Mystery

Steven F. Havill has been delighting readers with Undersheriff Bill Gastner for years. In this eighth book in a series full of authentic New Mexico flavor, 69 year-old Bill Gastner takes on the job of sheriff of Posadas County. It's a relatively rural area near the Mexican border and is sparsely populated, but crime, as Gastner well knows, can grow and flourish anywhere. The first problem he faces is the appearance an anonymous letter. The letter alleges that Gastner's deputy, Thomas Pasquale is stopping Mexican nationals and demanding money before they can go back over the border. Then other people come forward, saying that they also received the letter. It's a dilemma for the sheriff. He doesn't want to accuse the young deputy and find he's innocent; he doesn't want to let him go unpunished if he's guilty. Gastner decides to investigate the matter for himself. Before he can get to it, however, Gastner is called to the scene of a bizarre accident. A man had been fixing a tired on his backhoe when the chain holding the tire must have slipped. The tire dropped and crushed the man to death. The victim was Jim Sisson and he and his wife Grace were notorious for their marital spats-- the police had even been called to their home 3 times that same day. Grace refuses to say what the arguments were about saying that it was between her and Jim. As the investigation continues, it becomes clear that it wasn't an accident after all and Gastner tries to solve the case before another innocent life is lost.

With Scavengers, Steven Havill begins his new series featuring former Gastner deputy Estelle Reyes-Guzman. Estelle played a supporting role in the Gastner books, then left New Mexico to follow her surgeon husband to cold, cold Minnesota. Now she is back, welcomed by the whole department and already swamped in her role of Undersheriff under the new sheriff, Bobby Torrez. But Gastner's readers have the best of both worlds. The setting is still Posadas County, and Gastner, having taken on the presumably less stressful job of State Livestock Inspector ("What are those? Burros?" "Miniature donkeys." "Oh.") is prominently in the background, even though that seems like an oxymoron. Bobby Torrez is at a law enforcement conference, and Estelle, and early after her return Estelle is landed with the case of a body is found in the desert - that of a man who has been badly beaten and then shot. Estelle and her deputies begin the forensic process -- photographing, sending the body to autopsy, looking for identification and clues as to why the man was so badly beaten and then killed. Not long afterward, the discovery of another body yields more evidence of what happened and why. But Estelle is still a long way from finding answers to all the questions involved; meanwhile she is coping with an aging mother and a case of flu that has most of her family on their aching backs. Gastner, who is in the area tracking down a rumor of animals being illegally brought over the border, can help and does, but the horrifying and breathtaking climax is Estelle's burden alone, and she carries it off with honors. In the smoothest of segues Havill skillfully retains the well-loved familiar characters and setting while craftily turning the responsibility of carrying his compelling stories to a new and engaging star.

Scavengers: A Posadas County Mystery

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