The Right Side of Wrong by Reavis Z. Wortham

Published by Poisoned Pen Press on July 2, 2013

Cody Parker is driving through one of the few snowstorms he's seen in his life when a shotgun blast, combined with an icy road, sends him skidding over a cliff. The shooting and the crash are bad enough, but when Cody is about to be eaten by a pack of wild dogs, he knows he's having a bad day. Cantankerous Constable Ned Parker is determined to learn who ambushed Cody. The motive for the attempted murder turns out to be implausibly weak.

As is typical of Reavis Wortham's Red River novels, the most enjoyable chapters are narrated by young Top, whose conversations with his foul-mouthed cousin Pepper always make me laugh. They're the first to meet their new neighbor, an eighty-plus cowboy named Tom Bell. He's mysterious about his past, so you know Top and Pepper are going to learn something about him that they aren't supposed to know.

The other series regular, Deputy John Washington, is helping the Parkers bust up a still when they discover two buried bodies. The body count eventually rises. Washington and the Parkers, with an assist from the elderly Bell, make it their mission to end the killing spree. The story drags a bit until the final third of the novel, when the action moves to Mexico with gun battles galore. Still, compared to the first two novels, our heroes barely break a sweat in this one.

The Red River mysteries always create a strong sense of time (1966) and place (Lamar County, Texas). Dialog rings true, as do Wortham's scenes of racial tension in an area where whites, blacks, Mexicans, and Native Americans coexisted without mixing. Times are changing in Lamar County -- burlap sacks of "marywana" are showing up -- and Ned is no more pleased about that than he is about the world's dwindling supply of old fashioned manners. While all of that gives the book a realistic atmosphere, Wortham's reliance on homey bromides and fishing stories to fill the middle pages is starting to feel overdone.

In the first Red River mystery, Wortham blended the traditional elements of a crime novel with the chilling elements of a horror story to create a small masterpiece. He followed that formula with less success in the second novel, but still produced a story that made tension palpable. In The Right Side of Wrong, Wortham opted for a more traditional thriller/mystery plot. I enjoyed the result, but this novel doesn't generate the suspense that Wortham created in the first two. Of the three Red Rivers mysteries that have appeared to date, The Right Side of Wrong is the least successful.

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