Burrows

By Reavis Z. Wortham

Lyndon B. Johnson is President, Beatlemania is in overdrive and gasoline costs 30 cents a gallon when Ned Parker retires as constable in Center Springs, Texas. But his plan to live a quiet life as a cotton farmer is torpedoed. A phone call leads Ned to a body in the Red River and into the urgent investigation headed by his nephew, the newly elected constable Cody Parker. Together they work to head off a multi-state killing spree that sets northeast Texas on fire.

As the weeks pass, Ned’s grandchildren, ten-year-old Top and his tomboy cousin Pepper, struggle with personal issues resulting from their traumatic experiences at the Rock Hole only months before. They now find themselves in the middle of a nightmare for which no one can prepare.

Cody and Deputy John Washington, the law south of the tracks, follow a lead from their small community to the long abandoned Cotton Exchange warehouse in Chisum. Stunned, they find the Exchange packed full of the town’s cast off garbage and riddled with booby-trapped passageways and dark burrows. Despite Ned’s warnings, Cody enters the building and finds himself relying on his recent military experiences to save both himself and Big John. Unfortunately, the trail doesn’t end there and the killing spree continues…

• Language: English
• Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press
• Release date: Jul 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781615953943

Reavis Z. Wortham

Reavis Z. Wortham is the critically acclaimed author of the Red River Mysteries set in rural Northeast Texas in the 1960s. As a boy, he hunted and fished the river bottoms near Chicota, the inspiration for the fictional location. He is also the author of a thriller series featuring Texas Ranger Sonny Hawke. He teaches writing at a wide variety of venues including local libraries and writers' conferences. Wortham has been a newspaper columnist and magazine writer since 1988, and has been the Humor Editor for Texas Fish and Game Magazine for the past twenty-two years. He and his wife, Shana, live in Northeast Texas. Check out his website at www.reaviszwortham.com

Reviews for Burrows

[cathyskye · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I think it's best to begin my comments with a warning. If you are extremely claustrophobic, you might want to give Burrows a pass. I am, and I almost didn't make it out of the Cotton Exchange with my sanity intact. Now I can hear what you're thinking. If I'm so claustrophobic, why did I keep reading the book? Was someone holding a gun to my head? Well... no. No gun to this head. But the reason why I couldn't stop reading is because Reavis Wortham is a powerful storyteller whose words can grab you by the throat and not let go. From the chilling opening scene, I could no more stop reading than I could stop breathing.Once again there's more to Wortham's Red River mysteries than murder and mayhem. These two books are a pitch-perfect evocation of a time. In 1964, I was a couple of years younger than Ned Parker's grandson Top, but I also played "Combat" and rode my bicycle around town and country getting into things I knew I shouldn't be getting into. If Scotty were to beam me to Center Springs, Texas in 1964, I'd feel at home, and no one would have to tell me to be careful with the gossip who listens in on the party line. Although Top and Pepper don't have the big roles they did in The Rock Hole, Wortham lets us see how they're dealing with what happened to them in the first book. Both children are having problems, and Ned deals with Top's acting out just like my mother and grandfather would have dealt with me. (There are many benefits to living in a small town.) Do you have to read The Rock Hole to make sense of Burrows? No, you don't, but you're probably going to finish this one and then get your hands on that first book as fast as you can.There's a running joke throughout this book in which people are constantly telling Ned Parker, "I thought you was retired!" It reminded me of "Big Jake," a John Wayne film in which everyone thought Wayne's character was dead. "Not hardly," said the Duke, and when he finally got tired of it, he said, "I'm going to shoot the next person who says that!" I was hoping that Ned Parker didn't run out of patience like John Wayne did.If I have one complaint about Burrows, it's the fact that I think the crawling through the Cotton Exchange went on just a bit too long, but I don't know if that's a reasonable observation or my claustrophobia talking. One thing I do know-- the Cotton Exchange now tops Shirley Jackson's Hill House on my list of places that creep me out: "The anxious men beside the radios chuckled nervously and continued to watch the building. They were frightened by the entire horrific night, the Ghost Man, a demented murderer who had already taken one man's life, and a frightening building that was possibly digesting two friends at that very moment." If there's one author I'm glad I discovered in 2014, it's Reavis Z. Wortham. The man certainly knows how to write the kind of story that makes you realize reading it is much more important than a good night's sleep.