Texas author Hunsicker's strong third Lee Henry Oswald contemporary hard-boiled mystery, like its two predecessors, Still River
and The Next Time You Die
, does for Dallas what Loren Estleman's Amos Walker novels have done for Detroit. Lee Henry “Hank” Oswald (whose deliberately distracting name is the series' only false note, doing nothing to build either character or plot) has retired from the PI trade, and is passing the time and paying the bills by working as a bartender at a chain restaurant when Mike Baxter, a colleague from the first Gulf War, calls in a marker, hoping the gumshoe can track down his daughter before he dies. That request places Oswald in the path of Iranian doctor Anita Nazari, who hires him to find the person behind a campaign of psychological terror that soon escalates to violence. Hunsicker has a flair for turning phrases, and his broken, wounded characters could have stepped straight from the pages of Cornell Woolrich's despairing stories. (Aug.)
