Tibbehah County Sheriff Quinn Colson Faces His Toughest Challenge Yet

Over the course of the last few years, this has become one of my favorite series, principally because through the nine books to date, author Ace Atkins has created such a beautifully imagined setting in Tibbehah County, Mississippi and populated it with a great cast of characters.

That is not to say that the county, in the northeastern part of the state, is beautiful in and of itself. The rolling hills of the county may be naturally beautiful, but sadly the county continues to be a cesspool of crime and corruption, ruled by greedy and corrupt politicians, and populated by a lot of people who appear to be on a downward slide. For years a criminal syndicate has been running drugs and women through the county, often with the complicity of at least some county officials. A truck stop madam named Fannie Hathcock, the owner of a strip club formerly known as the Booby Hatch, now represents the syndicate in Tibbehah, at least for the moment, while a sleazy state senator named Jimmy Vardaman is the syndicate's candidate for the state's governorship. Vardaman insists that he wants to restore traditional Mississippi values, but his candidacy could mean that the state, Tibbehah County in particular, would be wide open territory for the criminal elements.

Standing against them is a former army ranger, Quinn Colson, who is again serving as county sheriff and who is determined to clean up the county, no matter the odds against him. Over the course of the first eight books in the series, Colson has been fighting what could best be described as a holding action. While he's sent a few of the criminals off to prison and dispatched a few more of them permanently, there always seem to be new recruits, like Fannie Hathcock, waiting to step up and take over the action.

This entry revolves around the death of a young boy named Brandon Taylor who died in the woods twenty years earlier. His death was ruled a suicide, but there have always been questions about that, and now two young female journalists arrive in Tibbehah County determined to reopen the case. Unfortunately, Quinn Colson, who was only a boy himself at the time Taylor died, is in the journalists' crosshairs as a person of interest in the case. The situation becomes even more complicated when Colson's wife, Maggie, who was Taylor's girlfriend in high school, suddenly begins receiving mysterious messages about the boy's death.

While Colson tries to deal with all of that, various factions of the state's criminal elements are jockeying for position. The one thing that they all seem to share is their belief that Quinn Colson is a threat to their activities and that he needs to be neutralized. It all adds up to a potentially explosive situation for Quinn Colson, and for the family and the county that he loves. This is one of the best books in an excellent series. Five stars, principally for the complex and very believable world that Atkins has created here.