First Texas Red River Mystery from Reavis Z. Wortham, THE ROCK HOLE (Re-Release)

At first it sounds confusing -- THE ROCK HOLE is the first of seven Texas Red River mysteries from Reavis Z. Wortham, with the eighth one coming out next January. So how is number one an October 202 release? Answer: It's a Re-release. Here's the explanation from the author's website:

"His first award-winning novel in the Red River series, The Rock Hole, was originally released in 2011. With the merger of Poisoned Pen Press and Sourcebooks, this debut novel re-releases in October, 2020, with a fresh, updated cover and an introduction by legendary Texas author, Joe R. Lansdale."

Now that we've got that taken care of, let's get to the book. In the summer of 1964, 10-year-old Top arrives at his grandparents' home up on the Red River, for some stability and good cooking. His Grandpa is the local constable, and soon Top is seeing more of the exciting and terrifying world of deadly crime than most kids get exposed to. Constable Ned Perkins, as Grandpa is known to adults, is on duty to take a look at a dead dog on their way home, the fifth killed, and Top gets a look at the horrible carcass -- but more importantly, he gets trusted with a secret, as his Grandpa says, "That's your Uncle Cody's bird dog someone stole out of his pen last week. But don't you say anything to him about it. I'll tell him." When Top asks why, Grandpa replies, "Because I said not to."

Top, of course, has no idea of the significance of someone escalating in grisly kills, or of how close and meaningful the kills are to his own family. But his Grandpa has. "Townspeople on official business passed Ned, recognizing the familiar constable elected only six years after Bonnie and Clyde passed through town." And when Ned checks in with his ally, Judge O.C. Rains, the two men pool their memories, goaded by a news clipping left behind with the dog's carcass.

With two fingers, O.C. pulled the newspaper clipping out of the envelope and spread it on the scarred desk in front of him. He waved at half a dozen flies that were immediately attracted to the odor. "You don't think he'll go to killing people now, do you?"

"I don't think anything yet, except this is cranking up a notch. He's liable to do anything."

And sure enough, the killer does escalate. Disturbingly, he's aiming at the circle of people closest to Ned, and Top and the other kids around him are quickly at risk. So is Top's Uncle Cody, his "favorite black sheep relative," a Vietnam veteran with an exciting tendency to get into trouble.

The tension ramps up, and it's hard to set the book down, since the action is nonstop. For Top, every twist, from Uncle Cody's lady friend and dance hall fist fight to his grandfather's law enforcement allies. could bring disaster. "Constable Raymond Chase passed the highway from the other direction, so I knew some people were going to jail. I hoped he wouldn't come to the house and get Cody, too."

Hard for some of us to recognize 1964 as the distance in the past that it actually represents, from "the War" to the slow inching along of "color" barriers at the time. THE ROCK HOLE will refresh all of that, while laying out an action thriller from two points of view and tearing open childhood's tender observations. Shelve this next to To Kill a Mockingbird for a look at another side of personal darkness and small-town caring. 

It makes sense that C. J. Box blurbed this book -- not just for the terrain, but for the flawed and family-bound people in it. Worth reading without distraction, so go ahead and spring for the newly released chunky paperback and clear

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Always Knew There'd Be a Mystery for This Massachusetts City -- New, from Liz Rosenberg

Worcester, Massachusetts: Drive into this bigger-than-expected urban enclave, with the second highest population of the Bay State's cities, and new buildings for the arts and commerce shine from the downtown. But the traffic patterns, the neighborhoods, the twists of roads re-made over the years and not quite up to the number of cars on them, even when it's not rush hour ... all these speak most eloquently of the years when manufacturing made up the life energy of Worcester.

In the powerful new novel from Liz Rosenberg, INDIGO HILL, time shifts dramatically backward a lifetime, after Michelle and Louisa's elderly mother dies quickly of pancreatic cancer. For one brief moment, Alma Johansson, hard-working widow of a hard-working good man, considers trying to tell her secrets to her grown daughters. But as usual, 43-year-old Louisa's brusque comment jams up the conversation, and after that, there's no time left to confide anything. Well, what could it have been anyway? Her daughters know all about Alma's life.

But when their mother's will is presented, they discover how wrong they've been. And the shocking process of allowing an unexpected beneficiary to come to their mother's house and sort through its contents spins Louisa, an outwardly bitter woman with a soft core shown only at her workplace (she's a much-valued mental health counselor), back into her own net of secrets, losses, and terrible trade-offs.

She'd known it for a long time. People disappointed you. They let you down, they went away or died. They seldom turned out the way you thought.

But not, whispered the secret voice in her head, not your mother. ...Her mother at least could be counted on; Alma Johansson was rock solid -- or so Louisa had always believed. ... No. No way, She just couldn't do it. Louisa stuck the key into the ignition, and before she knew it she had parked the Chevy in the lot behind the hardware store belonging to her oldest school friend, Flick Bergstrom.

The sight of the old familiar brick building made her breathing a little easier, the pain at the center of her chest less intense.

Flick, it turns out, bears outward scars of a fire they'd experienced as teens. Louisa's are inward. And to make sense of her own past, as well as her mother's, she'll have to open those wounds again.

A fire that changed her teen community is at the heart of what Louisa must exhume. It's a long, painful, yet achingly lovely process, something like peeling away the collapsed roof and walls to rediscover something precious and unburnt within. Rosenberg's pace is steady, relentless as time itself, as she walks Louisa toward the truths that shimmer beyond her matter-of-fact family, her compromising in love, and her community.

Is it a mystery? Hmm. The pace is deceptive; the secrets are deep and burning. I felt as though INDIGO HILL solved something vital, and something that could perhaps only exist in the layered maufacturing city of Worcester. Even when the author's Afterword reveals the "facts" beyond the story (a real fire in 1968; lives lost), there's a magical sense of revelation as well -- as if all the bok-length uncovering had created also somehow the answer to how to live with the past and how to bless it. And that may be the deepest mystery of all.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.