The Reluctant Sheriff

November 1, 2024

Ex-army CID officer Mick Hardin is still in Rocksalt, KY, although he always wanted to retire to Corsica. His sister Linda, the county sheriff, is recuperating from a gunshot wound suffered in the line of duty, and Mick is filling in as sheriff, with no backup. He sent the previous deputy, Johnny Boy Tolliver, to Corsica (a confusing storyline choice) after he was involved in a killing. While Johnny Boy fumbles around blindly there, Mick is reluctantly drawn into a case involving the shooting of a bar owner. The connection is personal to Mick, and he'd rather not be involved, but his take on the case is different than the local police chief's. When more men are shot, Mick's knowledge of the locals lets him dig out the truth. Then a violent confrontation in the woods around Mick's cabin brings together a small group under Mick's leadership. They're outgunned as they take on a group of outsiders from Detroit, but Mick uses his skills from his years in the woods and in war zones to lead his team to victory. VERDICT The sequel to Code of the Hills is an atmospheric, exquisitely written Southern noir.--Lesa Holstine

Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 6, 2025
Offutt melds sharp prose and satisfying grit in his fourth thriller featuring former Army investigator Mick Hardin (after Code of the Hills). Hardin came out of retirement to serve as the sheriff of Eldridge County, Ky., after his sister, Linda, was injured in the line of duty. Recently, the situation has left him feeling that “his life had reached its nadir at age forty—a job he didn’t want, a car he didn’t own, living in his dead mother’s house, divorced, adrift, and befuddled.” His position grows more uncomfortable when bar owner Skeeter Martin is fatally shot, and Zack Jones, the new husband of Hardin’s ex-wife, Peggy, is charged with the crime. Peggy insists that Jones is innocent and beseeches Hardin to exonerate him, but Hardin isn’t completely convinced by her pleas. When two more seemingly unrelated murders rock Eldridge County, however, the sheriff starts to suspect that Peggy might be right. Offutt’s sentences are a cut above standard-issue crime fiction (“Only nature itself was consistent—relentless, beautiful, benevolent, and cruel,” Hardin muses), and he continues to add layers to this series’ rich rural setting without skimping on pace or plot. The result is an exemplary Southern noir. Agent: Nicole Aragi, Aragi, Inc.

January 1, 2025
Former Army CID officer Mick Hardin is supposed to be retired, but his sister recently got shot, so he's filling in as temporary sheriff of Rocksalt, Kentucky. He's 40 years old and nothing's going to according to plan--and now his ex-wife appears, claiming that her current husband is in jail accused of murder but that the cops won't tell her anything. He agrees to look into it, only to have immediate regrets. This is the fourth Mick Hardin novel, and--like the first three--it is simply wonderful. Offutt, a native of Kentucky, writes about the area's people and places lovingly, compassionately, and, when the moment calls for it, humorously. "That woman is tough as woodpecker lips," one character says of another, and that pretty much sums up the author's colloquial writing style. The novel is a lovely balance of character and story, and it is, frankly, impossible to imagine anyone not falling a little bit in love with the people of Rocksalt.

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Starred review from April 1, 2025
The fourth in Offutt's Mick Hardin series is another quick-paced, quick-witted, twisty winner. The draftee lawman is of course former Army investigator Mick Hardin, his hopes for rural Kentucky retirement thwarted again: He's pressed into service while his sister, the sheriff, recovers from a gunshot wound. His first call (gloriously) is a domestic incident that takes him to a backyard yurt where he tries a tarot-reader's kombucha and dispenses justice with a side of horse sense. Then a bar owner whose tavern sits astride the boundary between the town of Rocksalt and county jurisdiction is murdered, shot three times. It seems that Mick has dodged this one: The corpse sprawls in the parking lot, which lies inside the town line, and he works for the county. But he's drawn in when his ex-wife, irresistible still despite everything, asks him to intervene; the accused, who argued with the bar owner hours earlier, is the man she left Mick for--and now father to her two kids. Alongside the quickly proliferating complications of that case and a second double killing that seems related, Offutt intersperses chapters catching up with ex-deputy Johnny Boy Tolliver, whom Mick has sent into secret exile on Corsica to recover from the trauma that ended the previous book, Code of the Hills (2023). With aid from a mysterious and dangerous ally of Mick's, the unworldly Kentucky-boy expat adjusts to life in foreign climes--and finds that Corsica and the Appalachian hills have more in common than he'd have guessed. The book's final quarter has too much violent, standard mayhem, but for the most part this novel is another propulsive delight, with indelible characters, crisp dialogue, and Offutt's usual masterful command of his setting and of the folkways and thinking of the people who live there. More delightful, sun-dappled Kentucky noir.

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