{"id":897,"date":"2018-12-31T14:34:21","date_gmt":"2018-12-31T14:34:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=897"},"modified":"2018-12-31T14:34:21","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T14:34:21","slug":"lone-star-book-reviewsby-michelle-newby-nbcccontributing-editor-92","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=897","title":{"rendered":"Lone Star Book ReviewsBy Michelle Newby, NBCCContributing Editor"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/span>Michelle Newby<\/span> is a reviewer for Kirkus Reviews<\/span> and Foreword Reviews, <\/span>writer, blogger at TexasBookLover.com, member of the Permian Basin Writers’ Workshop advisory committee, and a moderator for the Texas Book Festival. Her reviews appear in Pleiades Magazine, Rain Taxi, Concho River Review, Mosaic Literary Magazine, Atticus Review, The Rumpus, PANK Magazine,<\/span> and The Collagist.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lone Star Book Reviews
of Texas books appear weekly
at LoneStarLiterary.com<\/a><\/span><\/h1>\n
\n

<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

<\/a><\/span>MYSTERY\/THRILLER<\/p>\n

Harry Hunsicker<\/span><\/p>\n

The Devil\u2019s Country<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Thomas & Mercer<\/p>\n

Paperback, 978-1-5039-4190-8, (also available as an e-book, an audio book, and on Audible), 304 pgs., $15.95<\/p>\n

April 11, 2017<\/p>\n

The late writer John Gardner once said<\/span> there are only two kinds of stories: a man goes on a journey, or a stranger comes to town. In Harry Hunsicker\u2019s<\/span> new novel, The Devil\u2019s Country,<\/span> a stranger comes to a strange town. The fictional Piedra Springs is the Twin Peaks<\/span> of West Texas.<\/p>\n

Former Texas Ranger Arlo Baines steps off a Greyhound bus in the tiny, remote (\u201cbadlands between Odessa and Sonora\u201d) Piedra Springs. Baines is an admitted \u201csucker for lost causes, stray pets, and people who couldn\u2019t quite fit into the groove of life.\u201d Sure enough, outside a bar during a thunderstorm Baines stumbles across Molly (who \u201clooked like something from Little House on the Prairie<\/span>\u201d) and her two children. She tells Baines she and her children have escaped and if he doesn\u2019t help them, they\u2019ll be killed. Then the town\u2019s tornado siren begins screeching. Baines takes cover inside the bar, and when he goes back out after the all-clear to look for the woman and her kids, they\u2019re gone. When Molly\u2019s body is found the next day, Baines falls under suspicion and must solve the mystery and find the missing children to clear his name.<\/p>\n

Hunsicker knows his small West Texas towns, fictional or no. Of Piedra Springs he writes, \u201cYou either had business there or were trying to avoid business somewhere else.\u201d But when a storm approaches they are blessed with \u201ca cool wind that smelled like ozone and sage.\u201d For a dying town, Piedra Springs has a lot going on: Russian mafia, a mysterious Bentley driving around, public corruption, bankers (\u201cto not pay was a grave sin, a heinous crime, akin to \u2026 voting for a socialist\u201d), a cult (\u201cthe Old and New Testament mixed with Star Trek<\/span>\u201d), a sort of underground railroad, and the dark web.<\/p>\n

Baines\u2019s first-person narrative is told in choppy, simple prose. Great genre-phrases include, \u201cJimmy and Dales\u2019 Broken Promise [a bar] \u2026 had low ceiling and even lower expectations.\u201d The town sheriff has a Texas drawl \u201cstrong as new rope.\u201d Though Hunsicker has a habit of announcing what his characters will do next instead of just doing it (\u201cI decided to check if someone at the restaurant had seen Molly leave the parking lot,\u201d Baines announces to us), this is infrequent.<\/p>\n

Hunsicker is surprisingly moving at times, and leavens the mayhem and darkness with humor. \u201cWisdom comes from the strangest of places,\u201d Baines muses, \u201clike a philandering Texas Ranger in a Chinese restaurant a hundred miles past the exit for the middle of nowhere. Bubba Confucius.\u201d And sometimes he waxes eloquent: \u201cMen have been men since time began. Some have lusts best not described, for fear that others will fall prey to their particular strains of darkness.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Devil\u2019s Country<\/span> features a quirky cast of characters, plus many secrets and subtexts, and is packed with unexpected turns and twists. If this is the first in a new series, the premise of a lone ranger on the road offers practically inexhaustible possibilities. Hunsicker sets the hook in a short prologue, and the action hurtles forward until the very end with expert clue placement and a distinctive Texas noir style.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michelle Newby is a reviewer for Kirkus Reviews and Foreword Reviews, writer, blogger at TexasBookLover.com, member of the Permian Basin Writers’ Workshop advisory committee, and a moderator for the Texas Book Festival. Her reviews appear in Pleiades Magazine, Rain Taxi, Concho River Review, Mosaic Literary Magazine, Atticus Review, The Rumpus, PANK Magazine, and The Collagist. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/897\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}