Gun Shy
by Ben Rehder
St. Martin’s Minotaur, 343 pp., $24.95
Austin novelist Ben Rehder writes about the Texas Hill Country with such insightful appreciation that he’s come to own the territory, much the same way Carl Hiaasen owns South Florida. Gun Shy is the fifth book in Rehder’s Blanco County mystery series featuring game warden John Marlin as protagonist and low-key crime solver. In this witty whodunit, the author tackles gun control, managing to skewer both sides of that polarizing issue with sly, satirical humor while also raising thoughtful consideration through the experiences of Marlin’s love interest, Sheriff’s Deputy Nicole Brooks.
Rehder casts faux cowboy country singer Mitch Campbell as the newly appointed celebrity spokesman of the fictitious National Weapons Alliance. On the eve of a huge Independence Day NWA rally at his Hill Country ranch, Mitch shoots a Mexican day laborer in a drug-induced fit of paranoia and enlists NWA exec Dale Stubbs to help him cover up the crime by staging a phony hunting accident. John Marlin easily sees through the hunting accident ruse. Once Marlin begins looking for answers, the life Campbell has built around his Nashville-manufactured persona begins to unravel.
In true Rehder fashion, the tale is told through a complex cast of quirky characters: a lovely retired sitcom star and her ex-husband, the Pulitzer-winning political cartoonist, saddened by the senseless shooting death of their son; a scheming secretary determined to pay her credit-card debts via blackmail; a preop transvestite named Bonita; the smarmy congressman counting on NWA support to become governor; and those hapless miscreants Red and Billy Don, eager to join the NWA and pitch a new country song to Campbell. With each new Rehder book, I can’t help wondering when some enterprising TV or movie producer is going to snap up the author’s hilarious series for the screen. Gun Shy is the best of the bunch: It scores a bull’s-eye.
This article appears in June 15 • 2007.