CHASING AWAY THE DEVIL

Recently divorced, tough-tender Milt Kovack, Deputy Sheriff of Prophesy County, Oklahoma (Other People's Houses, etc.), has proposed marriage to feisty waitress Glenda Sue and been rejected. A day later Glenda is found murdered in her vandalized house trailer. Milt notifies her long-estranged daughter Melissa, who has a small, half-black daughter of her own—Rebecca—and puts them up in his mountaintop house when they arrive from California for the funeral. That's scarcely over when Milt finds his own house torn apart—and Rebecca hidden, but unharmed, by masked men who leave behind a threatening note loaded with racist invective. An odd discovery in Glenda's locker at the hotel where she worked points to a possible motive for her murder, but events escalate into kidnapping and more killings before Milt makes a daring rescue, pinpoints a source of corruption, with help from the FBI, and finds a new ladylove. Cooper imbues her story with a strong sense of menace, a touch of the occult, an ironic final twist, and a sharply tuned ear for the gritty language of the area. Solid and satisfying.