WINK OF AN EYE

Leaving Las Vegas just steps ahead of an angry mobster, a private eye runs into equally big trouble back home in Willis’ (The Rising, 2013, etc.) latest mystery.

Years after leaving behind his high school sweetheart, Claire Kinley, to escape tiny Wink, Texas, Gypsy Moran has holed up in his sister Rhonda’s house in Wink. Before Gypsy has time to drink a cup of coffee, Rhonda insists that he investigate the death of Ryce McCallen, a deputy with the Winkler County Sheriff’s Department. Ryce’s young son, Tatum, is sure his father didn’t hang himself, and his insurance policy won’t pay out on a suicide. So a reluctant Gypsy agrees to take a look at the file Ryce had on eight missing teenage girls, all undocumented immigrants with families afraid to complain. Even before he died, Ryce was involved in another unsolved case when his father, Burke, also a police officer, was shot in the back and partially paralyzed. Gypsy soon sees that the local police never bothered to look into the case of the missing girls, and the job they did on Ryce’s death was at best sloppy and at worst a cover-up. When Gypsy runs into Claire, who’d wanted nothing more than to stay in Wink and help run her father’s spread, the K-Bar Ranch, their love, or lust, is rekindled even though Claire now has a husband. Gypsy enlists the help of lovely reporter Sophia Ortez by promising her a big story. Together, they plumb the depths of corruption in the sheriff’s department. It’s worse than they imagined. And it involves an awful lot of people, maybe even Claire, who’s related to a deputy who seems willing to go to great lengths to hide any wrongdoing.

A compelling debut for a private investigator—part Old West, part modern techie—whose code of honor is all his own.