The Down Home Heifer Heist: A Sam and Nicky Titus Mystery - Hardcover

Photographer and former Army brat Nicky Titus, wife of Sam, the Catlin County, Oklahoma, sheriff, narrates this tale of modern- day cattle-rustling--which begins with the hit-and-run death of hard-pressed rancher Joe Pilkington. Accident? Or murder? Sam suspects foul play, but is nonplussed when the evidence points to Johnny Garcia--his friend and the only full-time employee at the Hereford ranch owned by his dad, Big Sam. Clues suggest that Johnny was romancing Pilkington's unhappy wife; meanwhile, neighboring ranch foreman Buck Houston is courting Brenda, Sam's brother's widow, and Buck's helper, aspiring country-singer Daniel Bibb, frequently turns up with too-helpful suggestions. Then a fairground employee is murdered, Pilkington's widow disappears, and cow patties mysteriously appear in sheep barns. There'll be another death and abduction--and an important visit to a laundromat--before the final showdown at a livestock show. Artful clues, but savvy readers will deduce whodunit long before the close. Fine background detail, however, and endearing characters in this third adventure for Sam and Nicky (The Devil Down Home, Death Down Home). -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

In their third outing (after The Devil Down Home ), sudden death puts Sam and Nicky Titus of Catlin County, Okla., on the trail of 20th-century cattle rustlers. At first it looks like rancher Joe Pilkington died in a hit-and-run accident, but broken windshield glass in a nearby pasture, the empty gun rack in Joe's truck and the Pilkington ranch's precarious finances persuade Sam, the county sheriff, that it may be murder. Nicky (Sam's wife and the book's narrator) objects when it is implied that Johnny Garcia, the Titus's trusted ranch hand might know about that missing gun. Among those volunteering information are a physician-rancher (and "jackass," per Nicky), and a macho cattleman who says he saw Garcia's truck parked at Pilkington's--when Joe, who worked nights at a machine shop, wasn't there. Sandstrom makes the most of her setting of ranches and cattle shows (where contestants are prettied up with hair spray and blow dryers), but the central mystery becomes so inflated that the finale offers more action than tension, and requires a follow-up explanation of who did what to whom and why--too late to persuade us that we want to know.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.