The Dead Certain Doubt: An Ed Earl Burch Novel

Ed Earl Burch #4

by Jim Nesbitt

Revenge, Guilt, Redemption & Gunsmoke
When Doubt Is Your Only Friend

Ed Earl Burch, a cashiered Dallas murder cop, is a private detective facing the relentless onslaught of age, bad choices, guilt and regret. Smart, tough, profane and reckless, he's a survivor who relies on his own guts and savvy and expects no help or salvation from anybody.

But he's also a man who longs for the sense of higher calling he felt when he carried a homicide detective's gold shield. He seeks redemption and a chance to make amends to a dying old woman he abandoned decades ago when she needed him most.

When he sees her again, she has the same request -- save her granddaughter from the vicious outlaws on her trail and bring her home for a final goodbye. Easier said than done because the granddaughter is a hardened hustler and gunrunner, hellbent on avenging a lover who got chopped up and stuffed into a barbecue smoker by cartel gunsels and a rival smuggler.

To fulfill the old woman's last request, Burch heads back to the borderlands of West Texas on a mercy mission that plunges him into a violent world of smugglers, cartel killers, crooked lawmen, Bible-thumping hucksters, anti-government extremists and an old nemesis who wants to see him dead.

The odds are long and Burch has his doubts -- about himself, the granddaughter, old friends and the elusive nature of grace from guilt. Truth be told, doubt is the only thing he's dead certain of.

Grace Or a Desert Grave?

306 pages, Paperback

Published March 1, 2023

About the author

Jim Nesbitt is the award-winning author of five hard-boiled Texas crime thrillers that feature battered but relentless Dallas PI Ed Earl Burch -- THE LAST SECOND CHANCE, a Silver Falchion finalist; THE RIGHT WRONG NUMBER, an Underground Book Reviews “Top Pick”; and, THE BEST LOUSY CHOICE, winner of the best crime fiction category of the 2020 Independent Press Book Awards, the 2020 Silver Falchion award for best action and adventure novel from the Killer Nashville crime fiction conference and bronze medal winner in the best mystery/thriller e-book category of the 2020 Independent Publisher Book Awards. His fourth book, THE DEAD CERTAIN DOUBT, was winner of the best crime fiction category of the 2024 Independent Press Book Awards. His latest book, THE FATAL SAVING GRACE, was released in mid-December 2025. Nesbitt was a journalist for more than 30 years, serving as a reporter, editor and roving national correspondent for newspapers and wire services in Alabama, Florida, Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Washington, D.C. He chased hurricanes, earthquakes, plane wrecks, presidential candidates, wildfires, rodeo cowboys, migrant field hands, neo-Nazis and nuns with an eye for the telling detail and an ear for the voice of the people who give life to a story. His stories have appeared in newspapers across the country and in magazines such as Cigar Aficionado and American Cowboy. He is a lapsed horseman, pilot, hunter and saloon sport with a keen appreciation for old guns, vintage cars and trucks, good cigars, aged whiskey and a well-told story. Nesbitt regularly reviews crime fiction and history on his blog, The Spotted Mule, and his author web site, as well as Facebook, Amazon and Goodreads. He now lives in Athens, Alabama. To learn more, go to his web site at: https://jimnesbittbooks.com

Reviews

[pawsreadrepeat · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received an advance review copy for free and am leaving this review voluntarily. Thank you Jim Nesbitt and Partners In Crime Tours. I'm excited to be a part of this tour.
Having lived in Texas in my mid-20’s/early 30s, I understand main character Ed Earl Burch’s love/hate relationship with West Texas. I enjoyed this book and it had me nostalgic for my days in Texas. The author does an excellent job of bring Texas culture (accent and all) to life. The book is well written, graphic at times, and accurately portrays what can drive men to violence when they feel like they have nothing to lose.

Burch, an ex-lawman is still alive despite abusing his body with booze and cigarettes and there is a long list of people who would love nothing other than seeing him six feet under. Seeking redemption and a chance to make amends to a dying old woman he abandoned decades ago, when she needed him most. She asks him to keep her granddaughter safe. This is easier said than done. Her granddaughter is a career hustler and gunrunner determined to avenge the death of her lover by taking on the cartel.

What ensues is an action-packed, edge of your seek book that will immerse you immediately. The book is well written with a cast of eclectic characters that bring the story to life.

[Rich Zahradnik · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jim Nesbitt delivers his best West Texas hard-boiled crime novel yet with the fourth installment in his Ed Earl Burch series, “The Dead Certain Doubt.” Nesbitt has a way with titles, as he has a way with crackling language that carries you into the darkest places populated by unforgettable characters. Ed Earl is a private eye of a certain vintage, though not the kind you find in the best wine cellars. Feeling his age and his sins, he seeks redemption by helping a dying woman he should have aided years earlier. He heads into the West Texas badlands looking for the woman’s granddaughter. This stark yet beautiful world is populated by gun runners, cartel killers, rustlers, thieves and crooked lawmen. Problem is, the granddaughter looks to have hooked up with even worse: white supremacists. Ed Earl is in for a fight. He’s always in for a fight. That’s what makes him such a compelling character, battling time, tides and too many bad guys. “The Dead Certain Doubt” is a thrilling, lightning-paced, ferocious crime novel. Highly recommended!

I received an advanced copy of this book to review.

[Kevintipple · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Dead Certain Doubt Jim Nesbitt March 2023


Dallas Private Investigator Ed Earl Burch has a love/hate relationship with West Texas. Loves the land and its stark beauty. Does not care for many of the people--- especially the ones that have repeatedly tried to kill him. But, truth be told, he never felt more alive than when working out there being the manhunter deal where one kills or is killed. It was like working Dallas Homicide without the red tape. Get the bad guys and gals, dead or alive.


In the wake of the savings and loan collapse the last decade, these days he is off the pills and making a good living going after the fugitive partners of real estate deals that went bad, finding hidden asserts, and nailing dead beat developers. He has done so well that he got his lawyer paid off and that meant he was free and clear from that shyster. Also did well enough to open an IRA and play in the stock market a little. He is a regular guy these guys with bad knees, mental and physical scars, and is absolutely bored out of his mind.


He’s spending his nights at Louie’s when he can’t sleep, drinking, and sharing war stories with a bunch of retired Dallas cops and other folks. Those old stories bring back a lot of memories. Also tends to sooth the voice of his long dead partner.


One memory from the past brings a lot of pain and guilt. Juanita Mutscher, at one time had an ex-mother-in-law, Theda Bayer. That woman had a daughter, Rhonda May Bayer. After Theda Bayer died as a result of her own toxic ways, Burch pulled a few strings and greased the wheels so that Rhonda Mae, who was six or seven back then, could go back to Juanita to live at her place out in the country between Midlothian and Venus.


It should have been a good deal.


It was until her Daddy came back in Rhonda Mae’s teen years, got full custody, and had Rhonda Mae move in with him. Things spiraled out of control. Burch intervened the first few times as she did drugs, booze and more, and repeatedly found herself deep in in consequences and trouble with the law. But, being off the Dallas PD by this time meant he had far less sway or markers to call in to help. He also got fed up riding to her rescue.


Now more than a decade later, Burch decides to go see Juanita and to make amends as best as he can. The years have not been kind to her and she makes it clear to Burch she is not long for this world. Her husband is dead and the next stroke she has will no doubt will send her on her way to him in the afterlife.


She would not have called. But, since he is at her place seeking redemption, she wants him to find Rhonda Mae. Been over a year since Juanita last heard from her. All she knows is that means the young woman is in trouble, not surprising since she is out in West Texas and mixed up in one of those Texas secession groups. While all the various groups preaching that nonsense are bad news, some are far worse than others.


Which one Rhona Mae is in, Juanita does not know. Juanita did save the letters that Rhonda Mae sent and she wrote some about what she was doing so that might help. Most of them were postmarked in Faver. A small town along the border. A place that Burch knows and he also knows the Sheriff down there pretty well.


With a starting point, a couple of ideas, his guns, and a handful of memories and ghosts, Burch packs up and goes down to see if he can find Rhonda Mae. It is a quest for redemption and to save the living, if he can. It does not take long for Burch to find blood, bullets, and mayhem. For Burch, this is the way.


The Dead Certain Doubt: An Ed Earl Burch Novel is the latest read in the series that began long ago with The Last Second Chance. As such, one expects the read to be complicated, violent, and graphic in terms of that violence as well as intimacy between partners of the night or long-term relationship. Such is true here as author Jim Nesbitt pulls out all the stops in every area.


At the same time, a significant part of this book is about Burch’s history and past cases. He has seen a lot and those deals are a major backbone of this book. Some situations, major parts of previous books, are detailed here in multiple paragraph odes of remembrance. As such, it would be best to have read the previous books before embarking on this read.


The Dead Certain Doubt: An Ed Earl Burch Novel by Jim Nesbitt is a powerfully dark and very violent crime fiction read. It is also incredibly good.



My reading copy was an ARC provided by the author with no expectation of a review.



Kevin R. Tipple ©2023

[J.C. White · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jim Nesbitt’s The Dead Certain Doubt belongs to the camp of great southern fiction, the kind of scorched-earth tale that doesn’t just crawl beneath your skin, it blacks your eyes, cracks your ribs, and reaches into the trembling meat of whatever’s left of your hope for mankind. And maybe that’s what sets it apart from the glut of paperback thrillers that clog the shelves like bad habits. This one remembers the code. The old one. Where a man pays in blood for his convictions, and keeps swinging anyway.

Ed Earl Burch is not your father’s detective. Hell, he’s not even your father’s drinking buddy. He’s older, meaner, battered by the years and softened only by the quiet ache of redemption that won’t leave him alone. A man with a past that shows up in every limp, every Marlboro, every glass of whatever’s closest. A man who wakes up each day and decides, in some slow, private ceremony, to not give up on the world just yet, even if the world has long given up on him.

The plot? There is one, sure. A girl in trouble, strung through the cartel's bloody web and trying to outrun a death sentence written in cocaine and inked by the cruelest bastards Texas ever birthed. Ed Earl goes after her not because it’s smart, or safe, or because anyone’s paying him enough to risk it. He goes because he’s haunted by the kind of sin that hangs around long after confession and because there’s a sliver of man left in him that still believes in something better. Even if that belief is buried under layers of regret and ruined liver.

Nesbitt writes in prose that snaps like old barbed wire and sings like outlaw gospel. There’s a rhythm to it, lyrical and staccato, like Tom Waits reading scripture while the devil tunes his guitar. There’s West Texas heat in every sentence, every dusty metaphor dragging across the page like a boot heel through gravel. He is that rare kind of stylist who understands that violence isn’t just noise, it’s consequence. And that redemption, if it ever shows up, rides a broken-down horse and never stays long.

Somewhere between the busted neon of Dallas dive bars and the baked emptiness of the borderlands, Nesbitt finds beauty. Not the kind you put on postcards. The kind you earn. The kind that lives in the cracks of a dying man's smile or the long silences between two people who know they’ll never be whole again. He writes like a man who’s lost things. And knows what it costs to get 'em back.

There’s something deeply Southern about this book, not just in geography, but in soul. A Faulknerian grief underpins much of the violence. Men clinging to a vanishing world, confusing righteousness with rage. You’ll find echoes of McCarthy in the landscape, that “barren beauty” that doesn’t forgive or forget. But where McCarthy stares into the abyss with divine detachment, Nesbitt leans in close, muttering to himself, bleeding through the knuckles.

And Burch. That battered warhorse of a man. He's more than noir trope, he's what happens when the gun jams and a beggar gets stuck in your throat. A soldier without a war, a cop without a badge, a sinner without a pew. His redemption, such as it is, comes not in triumph but in grit. In stubborn survival. In the way he lights another smoke and keeps going.

When I met Nesbitt at a book fair in Franklin, Tennessee, he signed my copy like he meant it, with that same raw, unguarded voice that drips off the page. We talked fiction, the hard stuff. The old rules and the new lies. He struck me as a man who doesn’t just write about honor, he wrestles with it. Same as Ed Earl. Same as the rest of us, if we’re honest.

The Dead Certain Doubt isn’t a beach read. It’s a crawl through the badlands of human wreckage, where justice limps behind, and truth rides shotgun with a loaded .45. But for those of us who like our fiction tough, our characters scarred, and our prose soaked in blood and beauty; this is gospel.

So read it. Then pour a glass of good Kentucky bourbon. Then read it again.

You’ll feel it in your chest the second time.

[James McCrone · Rating 5 out of 5]

A gritty, raw tale from the West Texas borderlands, full of darkness, dread. And doubt. Little here is as it seems, and even less what it claims to be in this compelling, dark tale of redemption.

The Dead Certain Doubt opens with a grisly murder. Smugglers and gun runners are fighting over disputed territory, and the killing is meant to send a message. Ed Earl Burch is a cashiered Dallas homicide detective, now working as a private detective. But he longs for that higher sense of purpose he had as a Dallas cop. When a dying old woman whom he abandoned decades ago when she needed him most asks him save her granddaughter from the vicious outlaws on her trail and bring her home for a final goodbye, he sees his chance to make amends, regain some sense of purpose, and maybe even get a shot at something like redemption.

But Burch, a profane and reckless survivor, is no knight in shining armor, and the granddaughter Rhonda Mae is no helpless damsel in distress. She's a hardened hustler and gunrunner, bitterly driven to avenge the lover who was hacked apart and stuffed into a barbecue smoker by cartel gunsels and a rival smuggler at the opening of the story. "They killed her lover, her best friend, and her future..." With no future, it will be her past--and Burch's--that will reach out to hobble them. And worse.

Burch will battle not only his present demons of advanced age, bad choices, guilt and regret, but to fulfill the old woman's last request, Burch will head back to the borderlands of West Texas on a mercy mission that plunges him into a violent, merciless world of smugglers, cartel killers, crooked lawmen, Bible-thumping hucksters, anti-government extremists and an old nemesis who wants to see him dead.

A terrific read, with stark, profane, and hard-hitting prose. The West Texas landscape really comes alive—its stark beauty just one more thing that might kill you.

[Michael Ludden · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE DEAD CERTAIN DOUBT – JIM NESBITT

This is hard Texas stuff, savage at times in its realism, perceptive in its recognition of the things that can drive men to violence when they feel their way of life disappearing. Or, perhaps, if they fall prey to sugary recollections of a past time.
Ex-cop Ed Earl Burch is still alive, but the list of people who want to change that is depressingly long. Burch decides to save a young woman who’s gone over to the dark side… drugs, gun-running, sex and revenge. And the list of people who want her dead is even longer.
Burch will soon find himself surrounded by bullets and the smell of death. Just the sort of odds the old Texan needs.

"Out the door. Into the cool, night air of The D, a mirthless and merciless city that ate the weak and only smiled at money."

Tough, bold and relentless, Burch always answers the bell. And yes, Ed Earl Burch is pure entertainment.

"Maybe tell a war story or two. It’s the way old soldiers and ex-cops remind themselves of who they once were before time and lousy choices took it all away."

[Danielle Urban · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Dead Certain Doubt by Jim Nesbitt is one of those mysteries where it dives deep into the protagonist's life and the lives of those around him. Burch is an average man who has his best and worst moments. One of his cases, still torments him every day. He finally gets up and goes to make amends. Only Burch finds himself further embroiled into the messy and complicated situation. This book is a slow building mystery but worth every page. It reminds me a lot of another detective like character named Alice White by Marc Hirsch where nothing is simple. The cases always revolve around a lot of people and are far messier than others think. I love a book that is deep, complex, and intriguing. Jim Nesbitt is a phenomenal writer. His characters are well-rounded.

I received this copy from the publisher. This is my voluntary review.

[R.G. Belsky · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ed Earl Burch is the real deal. A tough guy out to write the wrongs bad guys do and at the same time seek some redemption for himself. Ed Earl boozes, womanizes, chain smokes and shoots his way through Texas in this gripping fourth mystery in the series. Amidst all this violence, award-winning author Jim Nesbitt writes wonderfully about the barren beauty of parts of West Texas; about Ed Earl Burch's feelings and emotions; and about so much else Ed Earl encounters along the way on his journey for justice. This is hard-boiled mystery fiction at it's best! Highly recommended! And, when you're finished with this one, go back and read all the other Ed Earl Burch books too!

[John Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ed Earl Burch is pure joint-damaged cholla cactus, surrounded by water-sucking cartel murderers, cash-dazzled border grifters and sun-bent, double-crossing law dogs...He will guide you through the last arroyo with wit, truly memorable dialogue and locations you'd like to visit...with a gun. My advanced copy kept me riveted to my chair. After a rousing trip through Texas, locked, loaded and armed with Ed Earl, I was literally tired. Great adventure. Great story. Ed Earl brings it home.

[Carmen Amato · Rating 5 out of 5]

Written in author Nesbitt’s powerfully lyrical and staccato prose, the hunt for a troubled young woman who is involved with a Mexican drug cartel woman puts Dallas private eye Ed Earl Burch—and the reader—through the wringer. The pace is swift, the action is raw, and the characters are intense and visual. The compelling power of remorse drives the page-turning pace even as the glorious phrasing makes you want to stop and savor the work of a master wordsmith.

[Bruce Coffin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lawman turned PI Ed Earl Burch is like a pair of old boots. Worn around the edges, scuffed a bit, but more than serviceable. If you like your mysteries hard boiled, and who doesn’t, they don’t come any harder than Ed Earl Burch.

Gritty and tough with enough despicable West Texas hombres to fill a tour bus, Jim Nesbitt’s The Dead Certain Doubt is impossible to put down. A must read!

[Jeffrey Philips · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic novel. Lots of excitement that takes place in the west Texas hardlands.

[Karen Siddall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hard-boiled under the Texas sun.

The Dead Certain Doubt is the fourth book in author Jim Nesbitt's Ed Earl Burch series, and a reader would be hard-pressed to find a more robust and gritty crime fiction tale. Along with its riveting plot, the book is packed with fascinating, specific details about the local area's past, flawlessly woven into the current story and made relevant. This story simmers with bad men doing bad things, so be prepared for ugliness and the need for the protagonist to do something about it.

Ed Earl Burch, Double-E to the like-minded with similar pasts at Louie's, has seen too much and is close to gaining the 1,000-yard stare of military lore. But he's not that far gone to take on the request to find a dying woman's missing granddaughter, hellbent on not being found and exacting vengeance against the people responsible for her lover's horrific murder.

The story is as densely packed as they come, and the author's writing is compelling. Violent and graphic descriptions create powerful images that will set a reader smack down inside the story. The tale unfolds in the present but often returns to past events, so while the book stands alone, having read the prior novels would be a plus. The research that must have been done to authenticate the time and place, and to explain how those involved got to where they are in the book, is impressive, and readers will reap the benefits.

I recommend THE DEAD CERTAIN DOUBT to readers who favor harder, tougher stories, grittier crime fiction tales, fans of the previous books in the series, and stories set in West Texas, Texas, and the DFW area.

I voluntarily reviewed this after receiving an Advanced Review Copy from the author through Partners in Crime Virtual Book Tours.