BOOK REVIEWS

Where Armadillos Go to Die

PEOPLE MAGAZINE

Issue: January 11, 2010

Three and one-half stars

When Sylvester Bradshaw, the ornery cuss who serves the best fried catfish in all of Texas, goes missing (along with his invention, a food de-toxifier) in the midst of an E. coli outbreak, it seems every eccentric in town is a suspect.  With the local sheriff sidelined by rumors about his amourous inadequacies, it is left to the rueful retired Ranger Jeremiah Spur to sort the truly evil from the hilariously greedy.  But the true star of this hoot in hardcover is author Hime and his mastery of Texas colloquialisms  As the whodunit's pages rapidly turn, readers will savor every "Do what now?"

PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY

In Edgar-finalist Hime's fine third mystery to feature retired Texas Ranger and “perennially struggling cattle rancher” Jeremiah Spur (after 2004's Scared Money), the veteran lawman finds himself in the center of a flurry when the daughter of restaurateur Sylvester Bradshaw asks him to look into her father's disappearance. Brenham, Tex., is a small town where plenty of people have large ambitions, including the missing Bradshaw, whose precious food processing secret is protected even from his own sons, Mark and Luke. Bradshaw's fate and the fate of his invention hold the key to the futures of his sons, a doctor, a couple of lawyers, a retired NFL pro, the current sheriff, an ambitious prosecutor and the Texas Aggies' hopes for a football championship. Hime nicely blends broad humor and sharp characterizations, while Spur's mellow approach to investigation contrasts starkly with the blatant self-interest of most everybody else.

KIRKUS BOOK REVIEWS

Bagged baby spinach nurtures a strain of E. coli.

Everyone hates racist, skunk-mean Sylvester Bradshaw, but everyone eats at his restaurant anyway, because Bourré has the best catfish restaurant in Texas. The night Sylvester disappeared, his office was ransacked and his property stolen. The customers included an ex-DA, a former deputy sheriff and a retired Texas ranger, Jeremiah Spur, along with his wife Martha. Current Sheriff Dewey Sharpe, preoccupied with keeping his erectile dysfunction a private matter, is only marginally interested in Sylvester’s whereabouts, but Spur, approached by the vanished man’s daughter, finds that the case offers a respite from worrying about his wife’s E. coli hospitalization. In the waiting room, Spur meets Sylvester’s lawyer, Robert Bruni, now representing the Bradshaw sons and dealing with his baby girl’s E. coli infestation. Sylvester remains missing, but his severed thumb quickly surfaces, provoking the possible indictment of Texas A&M’s surefire Heisman contender, the legal waffling of p.i. Clyde Thomas, the political ambitions of DA Sonya Nichols and more. This being Texas, matters culminate in an over-the-top shootout, a confession so full of regional jargon that it reads like a foreign language and a triumph over E. coli that lends love a country-western air.

You might not want to live in Brenham, Texas, but its lively, unconventional characters and authorial brio (Scared Money, 2004, etc.) guarantee a few hours of blissful escapism.

BOOKLIST
Issue: October 15, 2009

Sylvester Bradshaw serves the best fried catfish in Brenham, Texas, but his personality “could make Chemical Ali look like Mr. Rogers.” When the dyspeptic restaurateur disappears, his family asks “perennially struggling cattle rancher” Jeremiah Spur to find him. (Sheriff Dewey Sharpe, whose erectile dysfunction is the talk of the town, doesn’t inspire much confidence.) The laconic Spur soon learns that Sylvester’s catfish had a secret ingredient that any number of people might kill to possess. Character—and sleepy Brenham is full of them—is one good reason to applaud author Hime. Another is his fine portrayal of the sensibilities and rhythms of small-town Texas; for example, in Brenham’s area code, even the Hare Krishnas are rooting for a Texas A&M football victory. Hime also has a fine ear for the colorful turns of phrase and metaphors of Texas and the small-town South. Armadillos isn’t perfect. Hime struggles a bit in positioning all the potential evildoers, but crime fans will find the tale terrific entertainment.

~ Thomas Guaghan

LIBRARY JOURNAL REVIEWS
Issue: December 15, 2009

In his third outing (after The Night of the Dance and Scared Money), retired Texas Ranger Jeremiah Spur and friends go about sorting out the disappearance of a small Texas town's most disliked restaurateur.  Did Sylvester Bradshaw vanish because of the E. coli poisoning that resulted from his famous catfish dish, or did it have something to do with an invention that interested several venture capitalists?  Readers will have fun watching Spur work it all out.  VERDICT Like Bill Crider, Edgar Award finalist Hime demonstrates the same knack for telling a good story while peopling his mysteries with endearing characters.

WHAT OTHERS ARE SAYING

“5 Years since James Himes's stunning Edgar Nominated debut, it's been worth the wait. Jim does for Texas what Pelecanos does for Washington, makes it live breathe. Jeremiah Spur, retired Ranger, a part pitch perfect for Tommy Lee Jones, slow burns off the page till he literally blisters into your heart. Rarely has a small town been better depicted than here. The novel had me long for catfish, Shiner, and more of Jeremiah. This is mystery writing at the very height of it's game.”
~ Ken Bruen

“Beautiful writing. Memorable characters. Seamless dialogue. And a timely and original story, tough and gritty as a Texas landscape. Jim Hime writes with a careful touch, an original voice and unexpected tenderness. A gem.”
~ Hank Phillippi Ryan, Agatha-winning author of Prime Time

“Set a chair up in that wide spot in the road and put your feet up. You're about to enjoy the pitch-perfect magic of James Hime, that raconteur from the Birthplace of Texas where red-blooded, catfish-loving characters meet high-tech greed. Where Armadillos Go To Die, the third in the Jeremiah Spur series, is a shot of pure black coffee straight to the vein.”
~ Louise Ure, Shamus Award-winning author of Liars Anonymous

“A mystery can impel us along on plot with nary a memorable sentence in it, while we toss aside any mystery that preens itself on ornate vocabulary and sentence structure. Rarely, we pick up a mystery where the setting is pleasingly unfamiliar, the plot is rewardingly intricate, the characters walk and talk as big as life, and where the whole book, line by line, is written, not typed or input or dictated. Such a book we read with delight, page after page. Such a book is James Hime's WHERE ARMADILLOS GO TO DIE.
In the Edgar-nominated THE NIGHT OF THE DANCE and the follow-up SCARED MONEY Hime let us hear rich Texas voices. Now in Armadillos all the characters except two tightlipped brothers are gloriously fluent in their own dialects of Texan, and the narrator enriches the characters with hilarious tall talk just a little sharper than their own speech. Every passage in the book delights the ear and the intellect.
In Hime's stretch of Texas culpability may go unpunished, an unexpected resource may count for as much as a redeeming character trait, and it doesn't pay to be judgmental. You can't call Armadillos a romp because the whole damned thing reads like a victory lap around nearby Thunderhill Raceway. James Hime is back.”
~ Hershel Parker

“A small-town story of a too-big idea. A Texas tale of good green turned to greed. And a would-be American tragedy averted--thanks to Captain Jeremiah Spur. It's a comfort to know James Hime is back--and that Captain Spur is still on duty.”
~ Theresa Schwegel