No Badge, No Gun

Carl Wilcox, a peripatetic middle-aged sign painter, crisscrosses the small towns of Depression-era South Dakota, attracting women and trouble in almost equal proportions in this consistently entertaining series (The Ice-Pick Artist, 1997, etc.). Though he's the less than proud owner of a jail record acquired during his reckless youth, Carl sometimes acts as the law--either officially or privately. This time, Carl finds himself in Jonesville with a nice painting commission. But this is the Depression and times are rough. So, when pastor Bjorn Bjornson asks Carl to find the killer who raped and strangled his young niece, Gwendolen, Carl can't resist the promise of an additional $100. Adams has a knack for investing the stock characters of small towns--doctors and lawyers, waitresses, housewives and salesmen--with refreshing color and originality. As Carl questions Gwendolen's father (the town doctor), her brother and her teachers and classmates, suspicions focus on Chris Kilbride, a young Bible teacher, and Derek Warford, a glib traveling salesman with a penchant for young girls. Carl finds serious romance in Jonesville with the school librarian--and danger, too, as a deadly rival stalks him. Carl's laconic narration is full of terse pleasures. In fact, Adams's prose, though as spare as a Dakota sky, contains more complexity and substance than most mystery writers achieve with the normal genre arsenal of noir atmospherics and anxiety-ridden psychologizing. (Nov.)