Easy Pickin’s

With a keen historical sense and storytelling touted by the” New York Times as “spare yet emotionally rich, ” Fred Harris spins an involving tale in Easy Pickin’s, his second mystery set in Depression-era Oklahoma.

Sheriff Okie Dunn is new on the job. The onetime boxer turned law student is now the Cash County sheriff, and Okie finally seems to have settled down. He’s even casting about for a woman-and might have caught two. Then the quiet town into which he has settled is turned upside down.

Three strangers blow into Vernon looking for a young heiress who was adopted at birth. After two break-ins and an assault on Okie’s deputy, Okie takes to investigating the strangers in earnest. First on his list is a slovenly bounty hunter, followed shortly by a tall, cool, red-headed woman lawyer named Em Hoffer, who claims to be working for the heiress’s mother.

But Okie’s troubles have just begun when a body-dropped clear out of the sky-lands in an oat field outside of town. Then Okie himself narrowly escapes an attack on his life, and the search for the killer becomes personal.

Just as Okie turns his attention to the third stranger-dashing, mysterious, and very suspicious-the man takes off with his easy prey. The sultry city of Veracruz in Mexico is far out of Okie’s jurisdiction, but he must follow the trail there, lest a killer get away with murder again.