The Reluctant Sheriff
The new Mick Hardin novel
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4.0 • 14 Ratings
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
FROM AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR CHRIS OFFUTT
A dark and fierce return to the Kentucky hills, where nothing is what it seems.
Mick Hardin returns to the trials and tribulations of local sheriff duties, whilst the previous sheriff, his sister Linda, recovers from a gunshot wound sustained in the line of duty.
Living in Linda's house in Rocksalt, Mick finds himself entwined in the trials and tribulations of being a sheriff in the perturbing Kentucky community. Unable to retire from a world of dubiousness and violence, Mick Hardin is back with determination to deliver retribution.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Offutt melds sharp prose and satisfying grit in his fourth thriller featuring former Army investigator Mick Hardin (after Code of the Hills). Hardin came out of retirement to serve as the sheriff of Eldridge County, Ky., after his sister, Linda, was injured in the line of duty. Recently, the situation has left him feeling that "his life had reached its nadir at age forty—a job he didn't want, a car he didn't own, living in his dead mother's house, divorced, adrift, and befuddled." His position grows more uncomfortable when bar owner Skeeter Martin is fatally shot, and Zack Jones, the new husband of Hardin's ex-wife, Peggy, is charged with the crime. Peggy insists that Jones is innocent and beseeches Hardin to exonerate him, but Hardin isn't completely convinced by her pleas. When two more seemingly unrelated murders rock Eldridge County, however, the sheriff starts to suspect that Peggy might be right. Offutt's sentences are a cut above standard-issue crime fiction ("Only nature itself was consistent—relentless, beautiful, benevolent, and cruel," Hardin muses), and he continues to add layers to this series' rich rural setting without skimping on pace or plot. The result is an exemplary Southern noir.
