Dan Rhodes Mysteries

Jeanne Clinton was a pretty and well-liked woman, though in her younger days, she'd been known to be a bit wild. But she married an older man and settled down to a quiet, respectable life. Now, she is dead...brutally murdered in her home. Dan Rhodes, the thoughtful, hard-working sheriff of Blacklin County, Texas, has enough to worry about already: a rash of burglaries in town and an election coming up against a hot-shot opponent. Now, he's got to find a killer among the residents of his little town - a wily killer, bound and determined not to be caught.

Sheriff Dan Rhodes knows it's going to be a bad day when Bert Ramsey arrives at the jail with a neatly wrapped arm and lays it on Dan's desk. He has another out in the truck, he tells the sheriff, and "a couple of legs, too, but they don't match up". Then Bert Ramsey is shot to death, and serious crime takes over. A tattoo on the body discloses that Ramsey was once a member of Los Muertos, a violent motorcycle gang from the city, and current members of the gang turn up in Blacklin County.

In tiny Blacklin County, Texas, a curse is nothing more than a four-letter word hollered in a barroom or muttered in the heat. So Sheriff Dan Rhodes is more curious than concerned when he dutifully responds to a complaint of witchcraft. When Dr. Samuel Martin, the local dentist - and unpopular landlord - claims he's been hexed by a tenant, Rhodes does his best to smooth things out between the distressed D.D.S. and the would-be witch. But in two shakes of a black cat's tail, the good doctor disappears...and his wife turns up bludgeoned to death.

Someone in Blacklin County, Texas, is being disrespectful of the dead, and Sheriff Dan Rhodes must put a stop to it. First, there's the matter of the bodies at Ballinger's Funeral Home and the apparent misplacing of their valuables; the bereaved are beside themselves. There'd best be immediate action, or the bell could toll again - this time, for Sheriff Dan's reputation as the guardian of justice and decency in these parts.

In this latest Sheriff Dan Rhodes adventure, Bill Crider sends the small-town Texas lawman to investigate the apparent theft of a set of false teeth from one of the elderly residents of the Sunny Dale Nursing Home. The case, which begins as one merely embarrassing ("Ah ain't got no TEEF!") quickly turns serious when the owner of the missing dentures, one Lloyd Bobbit, is found suffocated with a plastic grocery bag.

In his sixth adventure, Rhodes is confronted with what seems at first to be a suicide: the body of a man newly arrived in the county is found hanged in the dilapidated building he has taken over for his business. Simon Graham was a rare-book dealer. If it seems unlikely to find such an arcane entrepreneur in this extremely rural and sparsely populated part of Texas, it becomes less strange when it turns out that Graham was more con man than bibliophile.

For an officer of the law, Blacklin County, Texas, used to be pretty peaceful, but now, what with the emu-rustling, cockfights, and protests at the new Wal-Mart store — not to mention murder — Sheriff Dan Rhodes has his hands full. Hit hard by the collapse of his little hardware store, Elijah ("Lige") Ward has taken to chaining himself to the Wal-Mart doors and generally making a nuisance of himself. And when Lige's dead body turns up, floating down a river in a portable toilet, Rhodes finds he has quite a case to investigate. 

While all of Blacklin County, Texas, celebrates the first winning season of high-school football in years, Sherliff Dan Rhodes finds himself dealing with drunken festivities, fights, and the murder of the team's offensive coach. 

Lifelong resident of Texas and popular mystery writer Bill Crider delivers what Library Journal calls “a solid addition to a long-running series.” Blacklin County, Texas hasn’t seen much action since Sheriff Dan Rhodes’ childhood days. So when a ghost is sighted in the jail, and Ty Berry, president of the area’s historical preservation group, is murdered, the small county is shocked. Rhodes must get to the bottom of these mysteries before it’s too late.

Lifelong Texan Bill Crider pens enjoyable stories that weave together romance and mystery. When a romance writers’ convention comes to Blacklin County, Texas, Sheriff Dan Rhodes is confused about all the commotion. But Rhodes’ wife, Ivy, a devoted fan of the genre, knows exactly why all the female fans are in a tizzy - hunky cover model Terry Don Coslin is in attendance. But when Coslin is found murdered, Sheriff Rhodes begins to investigate a case of modeling turned deadly.

A lifelong Texan, Bill Crider blends just the right amount of humor and romance in his highly enjoyable mystery novels. The Sheriff Dan Rhodes mystery series, including A Romantic Way to Die, features the exploits of the savvy, small-town sheriff of Blacklin County, Texas. In Red, White & Blue Murder, Rhodes is hard-pressed to keep his cool when a local reporter accuses him, among other elected officials, of corruption. Things get even more serious when a county commissioner is found dead.