The Down Home Heiffer Heist

In their third outing (after The Devil Down Home ), sudden death puts Sam and Nicky Titus of Catlin County, Okla., on the trail of 20th-century cattle rustlers. At first it looks like rancher Joe Pilkington died in a hit-and-run accident, but broken windshield glass in a nearby pasture, the empty gun rack in Joe's truck and the Pilkington ranch's precarious finances persuade Sam, the county sheriff, that it may be murder. Nicky (Sam's wife and the book's narrator) objects when it is implied that Johnny Garcia, the Titus's trusted ranch hand might know about that missing gun. Among those volunteering information are a physician-rancher (and ``jackass,'' per Nicky), and a macho cattleman who says he saw Garcia's truck parked at Pilkington's--when Joe, who worked nights at a machine shop, wasn't there. Sandstrom makes the most of her setting of ranches and cattle shows (where contestants are prettied up with hair spray and blow dryers), but the central mystery becomes so inflated that the finale offers more action than tension, and requires a follow-up explanation of who did what to whom and why--too late to persuade us that we want to know. (May)