Castle Gap

In small-town Texas, a woman with evidence of city corruption goes missing, and her boyfriend desperately tries to find her.

In Horsehead Crossing, Texas, Tacy Vernon works for the Economic Development Corporation, an organization that disburses grants and loans to small businesses. She opposes a business plan in which the EDC would cosign a loan for the local airport, a dishonest scheme that avoids asking citizens to vote on the measure. As a result, Mayor Turner Cam, and City Manager Aaron Foster, plot to first relieve her of her job and then to simply take over the EDC’s board, as well as manipulate the local media’s ability to cover their tracks. Tacy suspects both are falsifying financial records to make the airport deal look more profitable than it is, and that Baxter Whitey, the patriarch of the city’s most affluent and powerful family, is involved. When Tacy suddenly disappears, her boyfriend, Chase Haven, a chicken farmer and gun dealer, suspects foul play, and conducts his own investigation. In this action-packed—if overheated —novel by Ivey, the deeper Chase digs, the more he realizes the city is mired in dirty dealings, and the more likely it is that Tacy is out of her depth. The author paints a lively portrait of small-town life in the American Southwest (“‘Lord, no,’ Chase said. He immediately knew that it must be the King Ranch Casserole made with tuna instead of chicken”), one in which a handful of wealthy families commandeer the democratic process. The plot, however, unfolds with simply too many gratuitous twists and turns, each new layer adding to the general implausibility of it all. Moreover, Chase seems more like a fictional creation than a real human being, a pastiche of stock paperback characters. Still, Ivey’s eventful tale is never boring, and readers will keep turning the pages until the explosive ending.

A colorful, brisk drama that grows increasingly improbable.