These Mortal Remains: A Mystery
Dual Drigger, an octogenarian D-Day veteran, foils a bank robbery, leaving the two robbers dead. Then the old man is brutally murdered in his home. There are no forensics at the scene and no leads for Bo Handel, Caddo County, Texas, sheriff. A couple months later, one of Bo’s deputies, an African American, is shot and remains in critical condition. Bo is frustrated because once again he has little to go on, though he does note that Dr. Afton Spencer, the leader of a white supremacist movement, has quietly set up a compound outside of town. Spencer is an academic gone seriously off the tracks, spewing the ugliest of verbiage about Jews, blacks, Hispanics, and, well, any nonwhite. Bo doesn’t immediately link the Drigger murder, the bank robbery, the wounded deputy, and the arrival of the neo-Nazis, but he won’t be surprised if that’s where the evidence leads. Author Burton, who passed away in December 2011, had a keen eye for human inconsistencies and how they drive our actions. This is a fine small-town mystery sure to be enjoyed by Bill Crider and Steven Havill fans. --Wes Lukowsky