Murder in Four Parts
A Dan Rhodes Mystery
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
When Sheriff Dan Rhodes is asked to join the Clearview Barbershop Chorus, he suspects that there's an ulterior motive, mainly because he can't sing a note. He's momentarily distracted by a rogue alligator on the loose, but shortly afterward, Lloyd Berry, the director of the chorus, is murdered. Berry is suspected of embezzling money, and he's leaked the information that a member of the chorus ordered a singing valentine for a woman who isn't his wife. Later, Rhodes discovers that Berry has been gambling on eight-liners at Rollin' Sevens, a barely legal operation in a strip center on the outskirts of town.
Rhodes also must deal with the usual assortment of small-town crimes: a man dressed in his underpants and cowboy boots picketing a law office, dogfood theft, and attempts on the life of a man who likes to root through garbage. Rhodes sorts through clues that involve geocaching and barbershop singing with the help of a few oddball local characters before he solves the crime.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Sheriff Dan Rhodes claims he can't join the Clearview Community Barbershop Chorus because he's too busy "busting crime twenty-four hours a day" in Crider's wryly humorous if somewhat sleepy 16th sleuthathon (after 2008's Of All Sad Words). Chief among those crimes is the murder of Lloyd Berry, the chorus director and local florist, whose head somebody bashed in with a pipe cutter wrench. Also causing the Texas lawman considerable consternation is locating the owner of a chicken-eating alligator, calming down two feuding neighbors and dissecting the cause of the chorus's internal strife. Then there's the nude bozo doing jumping jacks in front of what Rhodes calls the Lawj Mahal, the big new law offices of the county's most successful attorney. Trying to solve the various puzzles leads Rhodes into some less than agreeable situations, like pulling a Charles Bronson chasing a bad guy on top of a moving train at the mystery's satisfying climax.
