Friday
means Friday’s Forgotten Books hosted by Patti Abbott on her blog.
As you surface from a turkey fog with criminal possibilities regarding certain
family members dancing in your heads, I offer you a mystery that blends some
humor, with plenty of suspects, and more than a dash of Texas flavor. A very good read from author Bill Crider (who
also happens to have a story in the new anthology TALES
FROM THE OTHERVERSE: STORIES OF ALTERNATE HISTORY and well worth your
time…
Professor Carl Burns knew the new dean
at Hartley Gorman College wasn’t going to work out when she got a goat. There
may have been good reasons to get a goat, but that is just not something that
is a big winner in the minds of many people. While some of the staff are
fixated on the goat and consider the new dean a “unreconstructed hippie” Professor Burns, who is also chairman of the
English Department, is much more worried about her other issues. Of course, if
Burns had just applied for the job, he most likely would have gotten it. Burns
had absolutely no desire to be the academic dean and that means everyone is
going to have to deal with Dr. Gwendolyn Partridge.
While she was highly recommended
nobody warned those at HGC that she was highly liberal. A conservative private
school located near the small south Texas town of Pecan City, Texas was not
ready for her kind of leadership. She has ideas that others would consider
radical. She has also brought in Professor Eric Holt who, as other employees
see it, is getting special treatment he does not warrant. Both Partridge and
Holt want to significantly shake up the curriculum and that is not helping
matters.
If that wasn’t enough, the death of
Thomas Henderson rattles the entire college. It is clear that he died after
impacting the ground due to a fall out of his third floor office window.
Landing on your head tends to kill you dead. It is also pretty clear he did not
voluntarily crash through the window to his death. Considering Burns’
reputation for solving such cases it is not surprising when Burns starts
investigating the situation in … A Dangerous Thing.
Rich with complex characters, humor,
as well as scenic details and atmosphere, this third read in the Carl
Burns mystery series is another excellent cozy style mystery.
Originally published in 1994 and recently made available again thanks to the
e-book format, the mystery does not follow the current fad of dropping a murder
victim in the first paragraph. Instead, it builds the situation as Texas author
Bill Crider weaves a number of threads together before getting to the heart of
the matter. A mighty good read, … A Dangerous Thing can be read as a
standalone if so desired as it just briefly references earlier events in one One
Dead Dean and Dying
Voices.
… A Dangerous Thing: A Carl Burns
Mystery
Bill Crider
Crossroad Press
January 2013
ASIN: B00AZ0YU6A
E-Book (estimated print length 176
pages)
$3.99
I got the hardback version of this
to read and review by way of the Plano Public Library System.
Kevin R. Tipple ©2015
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2 comments:
This sounds like a hoot. Crider keeps coming up with the damndest series characters.
That he does. It is a good series. I review the last one in the series, Dead Soldiers, on 12/18/15.
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