The Cheating Side

From the cheating side of Boise in Garden City, where Idahoans hide their dirtiest secrets, empty-nesting private investigator Jimmy Chinden is tracking a stolen 1961 Impala when he follows a column of smoke into the sagebrush to discover the vehicle—on fire, and with a body in the trunk. The victim is a reviled swindler, who Jimmy suspects murdered his mother after bilking her out of the no-tell motel she owned. The body's discovery awakens generational demons and sets off a chain of dark events as Jimmy's theft case turns into a murder investigation, threatening to upend a land deal worth millions and putting Jimmy's family at risk as North Idaho white supremacists and their drug cartel associates come gunning for him. With a cast of characters evoking Elmore Leonard's society of goons, and a connection to the landscape that is vivid, visceral, and reminiscent of James Lee Burke's Dave Robicheaux novels, Appelman's The Cheating Side provides a genre-pushing, socially relevant reinvigoration of the American crime novel protagonist, with a challenge to pervasive masculinity tropes and a biting, no-holds-barred attack on the bigotries of the American West.