A Thousand Falling Crows
Larry D. Sweazy
Seventh Street Books
Paperback $15.95
ebook $ $11.99

I love noir, especially Depression Era noir, and most especially when it’s set in my home state of Texas. So A Thousand Falling Crows was my pint of hooch. Many thanks to the good folks at Seventh Street Books for the review copy.  Seventh Street has an outstanding line, and I need to get caught up on a number of their titles.

Sonny Burton is a Texas Ranger in the Panhandle who has been forced to retire after a shootout with Bonnie and Clyde in which he took a bullet in his right arm. Now the arm has been amputated, Sonny is no longer a Ranger, and he’s got to figure out what to do with the rest of his life.

He befriends the janitor, Aldo Hernandez, at the hospital. Aldo’s daughter has stolen her father’s recipe for bathtub gin and run off with a couple of minor league bootleggers, twin brothers. Aldo is afraid she’s going to end up in serious trouble with the law. He’s right. His daughter and the brothers are about to set out on a Bonnie and Clyde crime spree that is only going to escalate.

But that’s not the only criminal activity in town. The corpses of young women are being found mutilated outside of town. They aren’t local girls, and so far no one has stepped forward to identify them. The only witnesses to the crimes are the crows roosting in the trees and along power lines.

Sonny Burton is a wonderfully flawed protagonist. Sweazy does a great job of getting inside his head as he battles with all the adjustments he has to make after the loss of his arm. His relationship with his estranged son, who is also a Texas Ranger who has been assigned to the area, provides a strong foil.

A Thousand Falling Crows moves quickly, with chapters switching between Sonny’s viewpoint and that of Carmen, Aldo’s daughter. And although I figured out who the serial killer was, the mystery angle was satisfying. This is more of a crime novel than a mystery. My only complaint was the author tended to refer to the Texas Panhandle as North Texas. Those are two separate areas of the state. (North Texas consists of the counties south of the Red River and includes Dallas and Fort Worth.)

I’m really hoping that A Thousand Falling Crows is the first installment in a new series. This is one I could really sink my teeth into.