Steven F. Havill, Less Than a Moment
Copyright © 2020 Steven F, Havill
Poisoned Pen Press
ISBN 13: 978-1-4926-9909-5
The 24th entry in Havill’s Posada County series maintains the high standard he has set since the first book, Heartshot (1991). The cast has evolved, and aged, pretty much in real time, since the early books (in which the lead character was Bill Gastner, the undersheriff, at the time; he’s now retired and in his 80s). In the recent books, the narratives have been carried by Estelle Reyes-Guzman (the current undersheriff) and Bobby Torres (the sheriff). We open with Torres’s nephew, Quentin Torres having been arrested—for the third time—for DUI. And the offices of the local newspaper, the Posadas Register, get shot up late at night, with the managing editor and the young ace reported being injured.
Quentin (to keep identities straight, I’ll refer to him by his first name and to his uncle by their surname) is handsome, smart, and (obviously) has a drinking problem. He’s hoping to get a job with the Night Zone, the largest local employer—a combination astronomical research facility and tourist attraction. The DUIs, of course, do him no favors. And as an added attraction, Kyle and Lydia Thompson have arrived in New Mexico with a boatload of money and an interest in doing a real estate development in Posadas County. This could make things difficult for the Night Zone’s research activities—the lack of ambient lighting at night makes the job a lot easier.
There are, of course, side plots. Estelle’s extremely talented son Francisco (he’s a pianist) and his equally talented wife Angie (a cellist) are in town building a home/music studio and on their way to Hawaii for a concert/recording session. Gastner is on the trail of a pistol—from the 1880s—which was sold to someone long, long ago in New Mexico; Gastner found the gun some time ago and is interested in tracing its existence, and why it wound up semi-buried in the sand. Because good guns were expensive in the 1880s, often costing a month’s wages or more. (Think of that as $3500 for a handgun today. [1]
The pace of the book is fairly leisurely, but it picks up speed when Kyle Thompson’s body is found at the base of a mesa; the condition of the body indicates (even I realized this as the investigation opens) that it was not a case of Thompson tripping or slipping from the top—either he jumped (and the indications are that he would have needed a running start, and he had a badly injured ankle) or very forcibly pushed.
So we have both a whydunit (was it personal, or was it related to the property development plans the Thompsons had?) and a whodunit…and who depends, clearly, on the why. It’s hard for Reyes-Guzman and Torres to get a handle on the case, and they seem to be making very little progress. But (in what I think is the only weakness, although I also think that it can be seen as an outgrowth and consequence of what else was going on) they do finally discover why, and who.
I can’t recommend this series highly enough; if you haven’t read any of it and you are a mystery fan, you should give it a shot. While there’s a case for starting at the beginning, I think you can read the books as stand-alones without any loss. So start with Less Than a Moment or start with any of the others, it’ll be worth your reading time.
[1] This website indicates that extremely high end handguns these days sell for between $900 and $1600.
https://www.wideopenspaces.com/10-handguns-worth-the-money/
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