Bill Crider – författare

Professor Carl Burns knew the new dean wasn't going to work out when she bought the two goats. And that was the least of the problems. Hartley Gorman College was being attacked - with a vengeance - by the forces of political correctness, and the new dean was an unreconstructed hippie. Courses would have to be rewritten, manners watched... and everyone knew Burns should have been the new dean, anyway. As if this weren't enough to contend with, Tom Henderson's fatal fall through a window definitely wasn't part of the planned curriculum. But figuring out whodunit is going to be a lot more interesting for Burns than grading papers for his developmental English class.

Jeanne Clinton was a pretty and well-liked woman—though in her younger days she'd been known to be a bit wild. She married an older man and settled down to a quiet, respectable life. Now she's 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 hotshot 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.The deeper Rhodes digs into the hearts and minds of his neighbors, the more secrets he turns up, and the more violence he encounters. But Rhodes doesn't give up easily. And neither does the killer.

Pecan City, Texas, is a quiet, uneventful town. Hartley Gorman is a sedate, fundamentalist college (although a dean was murdered there once—in Bill Crider's One Dead Dean). English professor Carl Burns is about to begin yet another year in such a place, with only the eccentricities of his fellow teachers to entertain him.Even Burns, perpetual worrier that he is, envisions the worst of his problems to be the pigeons that have roosted in the attic above his office and the uninspired students that have enrolled for his classes.But what Burns hasn't counted on is the Edward Street Seminar, a conference that Burns has been assigned to run, which honors one Edward Street, former HGC professor and, lately, Hollywood celebrity. When Street comes back to Hartley Gorman and proceeds to offend everyone in town, and then turns up dead in his motel room, there is no shortage of suspects and Burns really begins to worry!

Bill Crider, famous for the popular Sheriff Dan Rhodes mystery series, is back with a mystery novel combining his wry wit, a clever plot, and the usual hijinks - all set against the normally placid backdrop of academia. First, someone steals several valuable toy soldiers from the collection of the dean of a small liberal arts school. The dean asks Carl Burns, Chair of the English Department, to look into things. Then a college board member is killed, and one of the stolen soldiers is found at the scene. After another attempted murder, another soldier is found, making a clear link between the stolen toys and the shooting. Burns begins asking questions and finds himself involved with a varied cast of characters, all of whom appear to have some connection to both toy soldiers and the murder.

After he failed to find his missing sister, whose remains finally turned up in a bag in an overgrown field, Texas PI Truman Smith retired to become a housepainter on Galveston Island. But when an alligator is killed and its carcass left on display on a family friend's property, Tru is persuaded to search for the culprit. Soon the brooding gumshoe is stumbling over the bodies of dead humans, is shot at and run down by a souped-up four-by-four as he's embroiled in a plot complete with crooked police, a possible land-grabbing sheme and assorted "e;bad guys"e;.

Truman "e;Tru"e; Smith is a PI who'd rather be reading Faulkner or fishing on his beloved Galveston Island than solving mysteries, so when his friend Dino asks for help, Tru at first demurs. With some not-very-subtle arm twisting, Dino finally persuades Tru to investigate the disappearance of Old Harry, a homeless vagrant whom Dino and his family have "e;adopted."e; Tru makes some half-hearted efforts to find the old geezer--who Tru figures probably disappeared because he felt like it--but only succeeds in getting shot at, doused in the Gulf, and bopped on the head. Of course, these events not only make Tru cross, they also rouse his suspicions about why somebody is so determined to keep him from finding out the real reasons for Old Harry's disappearance. It's not long before Tru discovers that some very nasty business is going on--business that isn'tin the best interests of Tru's island.

Truman Smith operates on Galveston Island, not far from Houston. The first book in the series, Dead on the Island, was nominated for a Shamus Award by the Private-Eye Writers of America.In Murder Takes a Break, Galveston, Texas principal investigator Truman Smith loathes missing person cases because they either end up badly for his clients, or the person does not want to be found. So only as a personal favor to his friend Dino would Tru accept the case of missing college student, Randall Kirbo, who disappeared in the area while on Spring break nine months ago.After sifting the facts from the very minimal police investigation on the case, Tru tracks Randall to a house owend by a local vice queen, Big Al. Another kid who attended the same party was later found dead on the beach As the investigation unfolds, it becomes clear that this is anything but a typical missing person's case, and the party - and it's attendants - hold the clues to a killer, and his case.BILL CRIDER : "e;I was born and brought up in Mexia (that's pronounced Muh-HAY-uh by the natives), Texas. The town's most famous former citizen is Anna Nicole Smith, whom my brother taught in biology class when she was in the ninth grade. I've always lived in small Texas towns, unless you count Austin as a large town. It wasn't so large when I lived there, though. I attended The University of Texas at Austin for many, many years. My wife (the lovely Judy) says that I would never have left grad school if she hadn't forced me to get out and get a real job. I eventually earned my Ph.D. there, writing a dissertation on the hardboiled detective novel, and thereby putting my mystery-reading habit to good use. Before that, I'd gotten my M.A. at the University of North Texas (in Denton), and afterward I taught English at Howard Payne University for twelve years. Then I moved to scenic Alvin, Texas, where until 2002 I was the Chair of the Division of English and Fine Arts. I retired in August 2002 to become a either a full-time writer or a part-time bum. Take your pick."e;Find more of Bill Crider's books in digital from Crossroad Press, including more Truman Smith mysteries, the Short Story collection The Nighttime is the Right Time, Westerns, and his long out of print horror novels under the name Jack MacLane.Crossroad Press is happy to present mysteries from a number of prolific and talented authors, including Bill Pronzini, John Lutz, Tom Piccirilli, Ed Lynskey and more. Search these authors by name, or simply search CROSSROAD PRESS in the digital store of your choice for more titles.

THE TRUMAN SMITH PRIVATE EYE SERIES: Truman Smith operates on Galveston Island, not far from Houston. The first book in the series, Dead on the Island, was nominated for a Shamus Award by the Private-Eye Writers of America.That Truman Smith was sitting in a frayed lawn chair reading an old paperback copy of Tobacco Road was not remarkable. And strange as it sounds, it wasn't particularly noteworthy that someone wanted Smith to look into the murder of a prairie chicken; after all, he'd investigated and solved the murder of an alligator, hadn't he? The Attwater's Prairie Chicken isn't really a chicken, it's a grouse. And there are only about 108 of them in the world. The murdered bird was on Lance Garrison's land, and part of his deal with the government was that the small flock would be protected. Garrison's wealth - and his radio station - made him a likely target for trouble, but this was unexpected. Also unexpected was the reason the prairie chicken was killed ... and all the deaths that were to follow, and not of other endangered species. Some people in Picketville, Texas, had decided that Truman Smith endangered them and that he had to be stopped. The result was a deadly game of chicken, with Smith everyone's favorite target.BILL CRIDER : "e;I was born and brought up in Mexia (that's pronounced Muh-HAY-uh by the natives), Texas. The town's most famous former citizen is Anna Nicole Smith, whom my brother taught in biology class when she was in the ninth grade. I've always lived in small Texas towns, unless you count Austin as a large town. It wasn't so large when I lived there, though. I attended The University of Texas at Austin for many, many years. My wife (the lovely Judy) says that I would never have left grad school if she hadn't forced me to get out and get a real job.I eventually earned my Ph.D. there, writing a dissertation on the hardboiled detective novel, and thereby putting my mystery-reading habit to good use. Before that, I'd gotten my M.A. at the University of North Texas (in Denton), and afterward I taught English at Howard Payne University for twelve years. Then I moved to scenic Alvin, Texas, where until 2002 I was the Chair of the Division of English and Fine Arts. I retired in August 2002 to become a either a full-time writer or a part-time bum. Take your pick."e;FIND MORE OF BILL CRIDER'S BOOKS IN DIGITAL FROM CROSSROAD PRESS, including more Truman Smith mysteries, the Short Story collection The Nighttime is the Right Time, Westerns, and his long out of print horror novels under the name Jack MacLane.Crossroad Press is happy to present mysteries from a number of prolific and talented authors, including Bill Pronzini, John Lutz, Tom Piccirilli, Ed Lynskey and more. Search these authors by name, or simply search CROSSROAD PRESS at your digital store of choice!

Lee Strate has been shot and left for dead by two men who stole every penny of his $5000 fortune. His life is saved by Jack, a freed black man who agrees to help him track down his money. Heading to Galveston, they discover the thieves are working for the powerful Colonel Benson. Lee and Jack discover that Colonel Benson is involved in agitating racial tension among Galveston’s dock workers, the Cotton Jammers. Telling the white workers that the blacks are trying to take over, and telling the blacks that the whites are taking unfair advantage of them, Benson has worked both parties into a frenzy. The unrest is likely to come to a head just when President Grant is due in town.The hunt for the thieves becomes deadly, and Lee and Jack begin to realize the shattering implications of the sinister political plot that has enmeshed them all.

Lizzie Randall, the preacher’s pretty daughter, has been discovered brutally murdered. The young Mexican boy Paco Morales is found close to the scene making him a convenient scapegoat to hang for the heinous crime. When the town drunkard Willie Turner claims that Morales is innocent, Sheriff Ward Vincent is forced to investigate the heinous crime more closely. As his investigation progresses, the dark underbelly of the small western town is exposed, and the guilty seem to outnumber the innocent.

Ray Storey left Kansas for one reason: revenge. Assuming the role of Kit Carson in a Medicine Show that travels to small towns around East Texas, he hunts down Sam Hawkins, the brutal murderer of Storey's innocent younger brother. As Ray finally arrives in the same town as his quarry, he is faced with the harsh reality that he might not have the wit or courage to bring the cruel Hawkins brothers to justice. When a man is killed and a woman kidnapped, Storey must throw away his act and shoot with real bullets, or his own life and honor will be forfeit.

When Ryan came riding back into Tularosa people gawped in disbelief. The power-players in town wanted him out of town—whether by horse or by casket. His old friends welcomed him, but their faces were shadowed with doubt and hard questions. Why could he make it back to town to see his sister’s killer hang when he couldn’t be bothered to stay and support her against the treacherous Kane brothers when she was still alive?It doesn’t take Ryan long to realize that Billy Kane, who stands to hang, is not his sister’s killer. He focuses his attention on the men who first ran him out of town, certain that they know the killer’s identity. No matter how long it takes, Ryan is determined to avenge his sister’s death and bring her murderer to justice. This time he’s not going to allow the powerful forces that control most everything in Tularosa hide the truth.