Steven F Havill is still the master of the small-town police procedural…
As I’ve said a time or two before, Steven F Havill’s Posadas County mysteries have been one of my favorite police procedural series, literally for decades. First Undersheriff Bill Gastner, and now his successor – and protégé – Undersheriff Estelle Reyes-Guzman, find and follow clues, and figure cases out, while I just get to read along, and pretend I could have solved the mysteries too! As a bonus, the books are set in the wide-open expanses, forested mountains, and small towns of New Mexico, which Havill brings to life so eloquently. Of course, in those small towns, everybody knows everyone else’s business, which provides endless opportunities for mischief. And If It Isn’t One Thing has plenty of that.
There’s the tragic accident between a logging truck and horse trailer (complete with injured stallion and companion puppy) that leaves one person dead, and left me feeling a bit as if I were in a Dick Francis novel. The person driving the horse trailer doesn’t seem to be the person who should have been driving it, and the trailer isn’t where it should have been either. After all, Posadas County, on the southern border of New Mexico, is a long way off any reasonable route from Lexington, Nebraska to Colorado Springs. And there’s the domestic violence incident that leads to another death, and also to an injured officer. Neither of the cases are as simple as they seem on the surface, with leads to follow in New Mexico, in other US states, and in Estelle’s hometown on the Mexican side of the border. With a short-staffed department, Estelle gets to deal with it all, which she does with her usual aplomb.
If It Isn’t One Thing is the twenty-seventh book in the Posadas County series, which started in the 1990s with Gastner as the protagonist and then pivoted after his “retirement” to Estelle as the lead, albeit with frequent contributions from Gastner. Now, the series is facing Estelle’s own imminent retirement. I have my fingers crossed that there will be another book or two still to come, but fear there may not be. But even if there aren’t any more, it has been a great ride, and my sincere thanks go to Havill for each and every book. Including this one, which gets five-stars from me.
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