The Bird Boys: A Delpha Wade and Tom Phelan Mystery

Set in Beaumont, Tex., in 1973, Sandlin’s excellent sequel to 2015’s The Do-Right continues the adventures of Delpha Wade, who’s on parole after serving 14 years for voluntary manslaughter, and fledgling PI Tom Phelan, who has hired Delpha as his secretary. Into Tom’s office walks 75-year-old Xavier Bell, who asks the detective to locate his long-lost brother. Tom and Delpha soon suspect that Bell is not who he claims to be, and they realize that one of the two brothers is a killer. Meanwhile, Tom takes a case involving a wife who’s afraid her husband is doing something illegal and wants Tom to stop him before he gets caught. Sandlin does a superb job of evoking pre-Google days when detectives had to know their way around the library and be ready to talk to scores of people in the hope of finding valid information. But what makes this crime novel soar is the humanity and humility of its main characters. It is by turns exciting, tender, suspenseful, observant, and gently funny. Readers will eagerly await the next installment. [em](July) [/em]