Missing at Tenoclock (1994),
as by Arthur Williams—a one-off pseudonym of the prolific and reliably good
Jack M. Bickham—is the first of the two Jonelle “Johnny” Baker mysteries set in
the fictional Colorado mountain town of Tenoclock. Tenoclock is a tourist boom
town with enough celebrity landowners to make it a small and growing version of
Vail. There ski lifts, daily old west-style shootouts on its hokey and touristy
downtown streets, too, but for all its growth the Sheriff’s Office is still a
small operation that usually closes its doors by midnight.
Then
Sheriff Jim Way has a gruesome accident with a train; the engineer doesn’t see
him lying across the tracks until it is too late. Way’s clothes are saturated
with whiskey—a high shelf bottle of Maker’s Mark was found on the front
seat of his Bronco—and Tenoclock’s political leaders go into high gear to sell
Way’s death as a side-effect of his heavy drinking. But Johnny, who is
appointed acting-Sheriff as a publicity stunt by the county commissioners,
believes Way’s death wasn’t an accident. She knew Way didn’t drink heavily
enough to pass out on a cold autumn night, and he never drank expensive
whiskey. In the background is a missing runaway girl, and as Johnny
investigates she gets an uneasy feeling the missing girl and Way’s death are connected.
Missing at Tenoclock
is a traditional mystery with several beautifully crafted and suspenseful
action scenes. There is a scene where a major player is trapped in an old mine
that remains in the reader's mind long after the incident is resolved. The
mystery is somewhat light since it is clear who the villain is early in the
story, but Bickham does an exceptional job of ratcheting the suspense by slowly
revealing the how and the why of both Way’s death and what happened to the
missing woman. It doesn’t hurt that Johnnie gets in deeper trouble with every
step she takes. The setting is perfectly small-town with oddball characters—a
scholarly jailer and grumpy diner owner comes to mind—and small minded and greedy
politicians. Missing at Tenoclock is a title to keep a lookout for in
used book shops and thrift stores, especially if you enjoy a light mystery with
a pleasant setting and likable characters.
The
second (and final) Johnnie Baker mystery novel is titled Tenoclock Scholar (1995),
and it, like Missing at Tenoclock was published by Walker & Company
as a hardcover and neither book was ever published in paperback. An oddity
between the two novels: Missing at Tenoclock, was published as by Arthur
Williams and Tenoclock Scholar was published with another Bickham
pseudonym, John Miles.
No comments:
Post a Comment