No Second Wind

The Sheriff Chick Charleston Mysteries #3

by A.B. Guthrie Jr.

The temperature in Midbury, Montana, is hovering at 40 below zero, wolves are howling, and the town is smoldering with a strip-mining debate that quickly exceeds the bounds of polite discussion. The ranchers are not about to see their land destroyed, and as the miners’ trailers roll into town the tension rises.

 

Sheriff Chick Charleston has the task of calming the hotheads on both sides and making sure the law is carried out. His earnest sidekick, Jason Beard, is back with him, but the department is short-handed and Jase is instructed to find another deputy. It says something about Charleston’s problems that the likeliest candidate is bantam Ike Doolittle, up before Judge Bolster on a charge you wouldn’t believe if we told you.

 

Ritual cattle killings and environmental strip-mining hearings pale in significance when a murder takes place at the Chicken Shack, the miners’ hangout, launching Sheriff Charleston and Jase on a new mystery chase that will keep readers guessing.

Genres: Westerns

224 pages, Paperback

First published February 26, 1980

About the author

Alfred Bertram Guthrie, Jr. was an American novelist, screenwriter, historian, and literary historian who won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction during 1950 for his novel The Way West.

After working 22 years as a news reporter and editor for the Lexington Leader, Guthrie wrote his first novel.

Ηe was able to quit his reporting job after the publication of the novels The Big Sky and The Way West (1950 Pulitzer Prize).

Guthrie died during 1991, at age 90, at his ranch near Choteau.

(Source - Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jason Beard has left college to come back home to Midbury after his father died.He is working as a deputy once again for Sheriff Chick Charleston. The story begins in what people in that neck of the woods call a cold snap, the temperature is about 45 degrees below zero. The people in the town are up in arms about the new hard hats and their families that are coming to town preparing for the passage of a law that will give permission for widespread coal strip mining.

If this happens the land will be destroyed for years and will never be good for ranching or farming again, The incomers are just hoping for jobs which will support their families and resent the way that are being treated like lepers from the town folk. It is only the bitter cold that takes the edge off the hostilities. But not for long, soon there is the death of a newcomer who owns a bar and the sounds of wolves are heard coming ever closer to town and the people on both sides of the mining question fear for the safety of their children.

This is an intriguing story written in the eighties and it is interesting to compare the background of the story with the situation of coal mining in Montana today. The sense of time and place is wonderful and I shivered in my boots until the very satisfying conclusion. This rates as one of my favorite series.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Must admit I've gotten hooked on Mr. Guthrie's series. Characters are great, and he always tells a good story.

[Frank · Rating 4 out of 5]

Remember enjoying this when I read it back in the 80s.