Bill Crider: 52 books

After he failed to find his missing sister, whose remains finally turned up in a bag in an overgrown field, Texas PI Truman Smith retired to become a housepainter on Galveston Island. But when an alligator is killed and its carcass left on display on a family friend's property, Tru is persuaded to search for the culprit.

When Sheriff Dan Rhodes is asked to join the Clearview Barbershop Chorus, he suspects that there's an ulterior motive, mainly because he can't sing a note. He's momentarily distracted by a rogue alligator on the loose, but shortly afterward, Lloyd Berry, the director of the chorus, is murdered. Berry...

That Truman Smith was sitting in a frayed lawn chair reading an old paperback copy of Tobacco Road was not remarkable. And strange as it sounds, it wasn't particularly noteworthy that someone wanted Smith to look into the murder of a prairie chicken; after all, he'd investigated and solved the murder of an alligator, hadn't he?

Dr. Sally Good, head of the English and Fine Arts Division of the Hughes Community College in Texas, has her hands full. On top of dealing with the numerous complaints from testy faculty members concerning the allocation of the department's budget, she must also conduct an inquiry into the recent...

Beloved Texas Sheriff Dan Rhodes is back with his final murder case in That Old Scoundrel Death. When a man is run off the road by a thug with a snake tattooed around his neck, Sheriff Dan Rhodes knows it's his duty to stop and help out. The grateful victim gives his name as Cal Stinson, on...

Sally's husband has been dead for eight years; his remote ancestor, the witch Sarah Good, died on the scaffold in Salem more than four hundred years ago. Yet the president of Sally's college is afraid the story will reflect on the institution. Sally is annoyed. Sarah Good wasn't her ancestor;...

The piano man has one rule: Don't get involved. Just play the songs. But can live by that rule when he witnesses a horrific crime? And what price will he pay if he breaks it?

He's smart, he's attractive, and he has a special vision: whenever he sees the blood marks on a woman--marks only he can see--he knows what he must do. Kill her. Brutally. And not leave a trace of himself behind.

Short fiction from the author of the popular Sheriff Dan Rhodes series. In these 11 previously published tales, we meet a detective who also happens to be a werewolf; investigate two separate missing-animal cases; tag along with series characters Carl Burns (the amateur-sleuth English teacher) and Dan Rhodes; watch Elvis Presley hunting a vampire; and a handful of other interesting puzzles.

Ray Storey plays the role of Kit Carson in Col. A. J. Mahaffey's Authentic Medicine Show. Storey's using his job with the show to travel around the country to look for the men who killed his parents, and of course there's a showdown in the end. Also accompanying the show are an alcoholic doctor and the colonel's daughter.