No Good Deed: A Sam Dawson Mystery

Horn’s entertaining fourth mystery featuring photographer Sam Dawson (after 2017’s When They Were Young) makes the most out of its clever concept—a search for vindication by the descendant of a wrongfully executed man. Dawson is still scarred by the loss of his lover, Annie, to a serial killer, but he takes a shine to lawyer Cricket McMurdy, who had ambitions of being appointed to the Supreme Court, until she was saddled with a family secret passed down for decades that led to her moving back home to Wyoming and starting an investigation into the execution of the real-life Tom Horn, who was charged with murdering a 14-year-old boy and hanged. Snippets of what that secret entailed are revealed through old newspaper clippings and flashbacks to 1903, when a teacher was accused of perjuring herself in defending Horn. Dawson joins Cricket’s crusade to clear her great-grandfather’s name, despite opposition from the powers that be, even going so far as to engage in some illegal grave-digging. Fans of mysteries with a Western setting, such as the Longmire series, will be satisfied. (Self-published.)