The Devil's Backbone - Hardcover

Greer, Robert O.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 089296653X ISBN 13: 9780892966530

Publisher: Mysterious Pr, 1998

Synopsis

There were only two things that terrified retired black rodeo star and all-around gadfly Hambone Dolbey. One of them was water. So when Hambone's lifeless body was found floating in a wet suit, those who knew him best knew for sure that the cowboy had been murdered.
Two of them, a deaf-mute old rodeo clown and a former bull rider, ask CJ Floyd to find the killer. CJ has just chased down a rail-thin bail-jumper named Bobby Two-Shirts, earning himself a $3,000 finder's fee, a vicious bite, and a new enemy: Bobby's beautiful, long-legged sister. Driving bare-breasted through the desert heat, she is in hot pursuit of the man who put her brother away.
Now CJ has to watch his back and his front. He discovers Hambone Dolbey's colorful career included a kinky, forbidden, and potentially dangerous affair, and unearths a trail of deals and greed pointing to the mountainous land mass known as the Devil's Backbone. But while CJ hunts a murderer who has already struck twice, Bobby Two-Shirts's sister is laying a trap...

About this title

About the Author:

Robert Greer is a Professor of Pathology at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Anybody who knew retired black rodeo-rider Cletus (Hambone) Dolbey's fear of water can tell he must have been onto an awfully big payoff to be outfitting himself in a wet suit preparatory to getting himself beaten to death with a branding iron. And long before Denver bail bondsman CJ Floyd (The Devil's Red Nickel, p. 97, etc.) has figured out just what Hambone was looking for on his arid tract of upcountry heaven near the range of hills called the Devil's Backbone, he has a pretty good idea who was in on the search along with him: Pandeco oil president Whitaker Rodgers, so firmly under his CEO mother's thumb and so starved for cash that he'd be receptive to just about any wildcat scheme that promised a quick return. Unfortunately, Rodgers isn't the only person who might have wanted to kill Hambone; there's also Rebecca Baptiste, Hambone's tempestuous former lover, and her (and Hambone's) son; Percy Lewis, the rodeo rider who blamed his career-ending injury on Hambone; and all the Pandeco sharks lined up behind Rodgers. Despite getting warned off repeatedly by the law, CJ vows to get to the bottom of Hambone's death--not knowing he's already got his hands full with Celeste Deepstream, the vengeful and resourceful twin sister of a lowlife that CJ's just hauled back to Denver. Less ambitious and more fast-moving and streamlined than CJ's first two cases, though there are still enough interesting suspects in Hambone's killing for an entire page of the Denver phone book. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Mysterious Pr
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 089296653X
• ISBN 13: 9780892966530
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352