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    The Texas Job
    The Texas Job
    The Texas Job
    Ebook424 pages5 hours

    The Texas Job

    By Reavis Z. Wortham

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Some men are destined for danger

    Texas Ranger Tom Bell is simply tracking a fugitive killer in 1931 when he rides into Kilgore, a hastily erected shanty town crawling with rough and desperate men—oil drillers who've come by the thousands in search of work. The sheriff of the boomtown is overwhelmed and offers no help, nor are any of the roughnecks inclined to assist the young Ranger in his search for the wanted man.

    In fact, it soon becomes apparent that the lawman's presence has irritated the wrong people, and when two failed attempts are made on his life, Bell knows he's getting closer to finding out who is responsible for cheating and murdering local landowners to access the rich oil fields flowing beneath their farms. When they ambush him for a third time, they make the fatal mistake of killing someone close to him and leaving the Ranger alive.

    Armed with his trademark 1911 Colt .45 and the Browning automatic he liberated from a gangster's corpse, Tom Bell cuts a swath of devastation through the heart of East Texas in search of the consortium behind the lethal land-grab scheme.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateFeb 15, 2022
    ISBN9781464215711
    The Texas Job
    Author

    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

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    4.5/5

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    • 5/5
      The Texas Job by Reavis Z. WorthamSet during the depression, this book has the feel of a dime novel or perhaps pulp fiction. It feels “of the time” and the time of the story is early 1930’s. Set in a booming oil town during the heyday of a new era filled with men wishing to rake in the money…oil towns seemed to have the same feel as old gold towns. Tom Bell, Texas Ranger, is on horseback chasing a criminal when he meets eleven-year-old Booker Johnston who takes him to a female corpse. Tom and Booker become friends of sorts over the course of the book as Tom realizes that something isn’t quite right in Pine Top. An era with horses and automobiles both on the roads, good people being pushed aside by those ruthless enough to take what they want, bigotry and racial discrimination rampant, social divides prevalent, prohibition and speakeasies the norm, mafia types on the move, corrupt cops getting away with…a lot, and murder aplenty – well, this story is action-packed, filled with colorful characters, dark, and gritty. The Texas Rangers are doing their job but it isn’t always easy. Being a good person in Pine Top might not see you alive till the end of the book…and being a bad person might have the same ending for some of the book’s characters, too. This is a novel that will appeal to those who enjoy vintage stories with bigger than life characters, a bit of feel-good here and there, good vs evil, and a bit different flavor ovreall. It was not exactly what I thought it would be but was great for what it was meant to be…or what I think it was meant to be. I do believe I would read another book by Wortham and am glad I read this new-to-me author’s work. Thank you to NetGalley and Poison Pen Press for the ARC – this is my honest review. 4-5 Stars
    • 4/5
      I’m still not entirely sure whether to call Reavis Wortham’s The Texas Job a standalone novel or a prequel to his Red River series because, really, I can see it qualifying as either. The novel’s main character is Texas Ranger Tom Bell who, as an old man, plays a prominent role in The Right Side of Wrong, the third book in the Red River series. That book is set in the mid-sixties when Bell proves that he still has a lot of fight in him despite his retirement from the Rangers. The Texas Job, on the other hand, brings Bell up into East Texas from down on the southern border in 1931 and gives readers the chance to see what he was capable of in his prime. Tom Bell is only in Pine Top at all because he believes that the murderer from down in south Texas he’s been tracking may be hiding there. But even before he makes it all the way to the newly created shanty town, Bell - with considerable help from a young boy he meets on the trail — stumbles upon the remains of a woman whose dead body had apparently been hidden there days earlier. As a harbinger of things to come, Bell soon finds himself in a shootout even before he can make his way to local law enforcement officers to report what he’s found.Pine Top, you see, is more boomtown than it is shanty town. Oil has recently been discovered in East Texas and the area is overrun by hundreds and hundreds of men and women looking to make a quick buck out of the discovery. That not all of them are concerned about making that money legally, is an understatement. The people who should be becoming rich, the ones who own the land on top of the oil, are in more danger than they realize. They are sitting on top of the kind of fortune people can only dream about, and some in town are willing to kill to get their hands on it. Tom Bell has no idea what he’s just ridden into, but he’s about to find out.Bottom Line: It is always easy to get caught up in the historical period during which Reavis Wortham sets his crime novels, but this one is especially fun for readers curious about what a Depression Era oil boomtown must have been like in the day. Unsurprisingly, it was much the same as the gold mining boomtowns most of us are probably more familiar with, and Wortham captures all the inevitable chaos, greed, recklessness, and lawlessness common to this kind of race to get rich before others beat you to it. The Texas Job is a version of the classic tale in which a lone lawman rides into a corrupt town and, with the help of a few good townspeople, does everything he can to clean up the mess he finds there. It may be a classic formula, but Wortham is a good storyteller, and he handles it well.Review Copy provided by Poisoned Pen PressExpected Date of Publication: February 15, 2022

    Book preview

    The Texas Job - Reavis Z. Wortham

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