Bump and Run (Black Arch Books, August
2025) is the 26th book by retired clinical/forensic psychologist and
college professor Richard Helms. He is the recipient of the Killer Nashville
Silver Falchion Award (twice); the Mystery Readers International Macavity
Award; the Short Mystery Fiction Society Derringer Award (twice); the
International Thriller Writers Thriller Award; and the Private Eye Writers of
America Shamus Award (twice). His story “See Humble and Die” was featured in
Houghton-Mifflin-Harcourt’s Best American Mystery Stories of 2020,
edited by Otto Penzler and C.J. Box. His short stories have appeared frequently
in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine,
Black Cat Mystery Magazine, Mystery Weekly, and various
anthologies and collections.
Wade Durham of the North
Carolina State Bureau of Investigation and part-time race car driver makes his
debut here as he investigates the gruesome murder of a one-time football star
in the small town of Choctaw. Win Savage had achieved fame through a fluke play
during a Super Bowl game and then parlayed it into a broadcasting career. When his
newscaster popularity faded away, he retired to his home town where he
continued to capitalize on his name through product sponsorships and speaking
engagements. He currently was doing his best to stop a ski resort from being
built near Choctaw. Almost everyone else in the town saw the resort as the only
way to reverse the slow economic disintegration of their town, so Wade was currently
at odds with a lot of folks but no one admitted to being so upset with him that
they would kill him, much less hang his body in a barbecue smoker.
Helms captures the politics
and personalities of small towns perfectly here, contributing to the story’s
strong sense of place. There are always a handful of people who hold an outsized
amount of power and influence in small towns, and everyone else has to go along
with them or be ostracized, which Wade’s interviews illustrate. Choctaw’s power
brokers were the largest investors in the proposed ski resort and therefore had
the most to lose if the deal didn’t go through. They became the focus of Wade’s
investigation although Savage’s womanizing streak could not be overlooked. He
tended to leave a trail of angry women behind him, and Wade met several of them.
A community of off-the-grid
dwellers, a hamlet of ruffians and moonshiners, a 45-year-old cold case, and
some vivid descriptions of North Carolina nature all contribute to an
entertaining police procedural. I always appreciate a well-concealed murderer
and I didn’t guess this one. Wrapping up the cold case along the way with a
second murderer who had every reason to believe they had escaped justice was a
bonus.
Wade Durham has been compared
to the Virgil Flowers of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension books by
John Sanford. This particular story reminds me of the Donald Harstad police
procedurals set in small-town Iowa and perhaps the Alex McKnight novels by
Steve Hamilton. Fans of soundly plotted mysteries based on realistic forensics
and evidence collection with a strong sense of place should look at this absorbing
series launch.
·
ASIN:
B0FP2L2GGT
·
Publisher:
Barbadoes Hall
Communications/Black Arch Books
·
Publication
date: August 27, 2025
·
Language:
English
·
Print
length: 406 pages
·
ISBN-13:
979-8990041226
Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/4n6jRLM
Aubrey Nye Hamilton ©2025
Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.
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