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11.12.2017   Book addresses unsolved 1902 West Texas murder case

Since his retirement as a West Texas lawyer, Bill Neal has forged a second career writing about famous and infamous murder cases on the Texas frontier.

Neal spent forty years in West Texas courtrooms, twenty as a prosecutor and twenty as a defense attorney, before putting his research and writing skills to work as an author. Neal, who now lives in Abilene, has written six books dealing with frontier justice, or the lack thereof, beginning with Getting Away with Murder on the Texas Frontier and Sex, Murder, and the Unwritten Law.

His latest historical true crime book is Death on the Lonely Llano Estacado: The Assassination of J. W. Jarrott, a Forgotten Hero (University of North Texas Press, $24.95 hardcover). Neal reopens a cold case from 1902 involving the “cowmen vs. plowmen” conflict that raged between the frontier cattle kings and the settlers who moved into the area to farm and ranch smaller plots of land.

Jarrott was a leader of the homesteaders, and on Aug. 27, 1902, a hired assassin gunned him down. Who was the assassin, and who paid him to kill Jarrott?

“Nobody was ever convicted, or even tried, for the cowardly assassination,” Neal writes, “and for decades thereafter nobody in the tight-lipped, South Plains frontier community dared speak openly about it.”

After thoroughly researching the case, Neal names names and resolves the mystery. He also points out that the assassination didn’t accomplish what it was supposed to. “Instead of stampeding the settlers into a mass exodus, it reinforced their determination to stand their ground.”

End of series: Diane Kelly wraps up her delightful Tara Holloway series with Death, Taxes, and a Shotgun Wedding (St. Martin’s, $7.99 paperback). The series, which mixes in ample amounts of mystery, romance and humor, began six years ago with Death, Taxes, and a French Manicure, and the “Death, Taxes” theme is repeated throughout the twelve novels, such as Death, Taxes, and a Skinny No-Whip Latte and Death, Taxes, and a Chocolate Cannoli.

Tara Holloway, an IRS special agent in Dallas, is excited about her upcoming wedding to fellow IRS special agent Nick Pratt. But as she drops the wedding invitations into a neighborhood mailbox, a white pickup swerves straight at her, destroying the mailbox. Tara is not hurt, but the next day she receives a greeting card at work with a death threat inside. As she investigates who might be out to kill her, Tara revisits some of the criminal cases covered in previous novels in the series. Could it be that someone she sent to prison wants her dead?

Meanwhile, wedding plans go on, and as the title indicates, a shotgun might be present at the ceremony.

If you have read the whole series, Death, Taxes, and a Shotgun Wedding brings it to a fitting conclusion. If you haven’t read any of the other novels in the series, you can easily follow the action anyway.

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Glenn Dromgoole’s latest book is West Texas StoriesContact him at g.dromgoole@suddenlink.net.

>> Read his past Texas Reads columns in Lone Star Literary Life here.