{"id":6978,"date":"2018-01-02T07:52:22","date_gmt":"2018-01-02T12:52:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6978"},"modified":"2018-01-02T07:52:22","modified_gmt":"2018-01-02T12:52:22","slug":"easy-errors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6978","title":{"rendered":"****Easy Errors"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Auto

photo: Marcus S\u00fcmnick, creative commons license<\/p><\/div>\n

By Steven F. Havill \u2013 This is book 22 in Havill\u2019s Posadas County (New Mexico) mystery series and is a prequel to the \u00a0earlier books.<\/p>\n

Demonstrating how reader opinion is more than background noise to crime fiction writers, Havill says Easy Errors<\/a><\/em> sprang from a reader\u2019s request for more information about Sheriff Robert Torrez\u2019s early career. It\u2019s a testament to how well Havill knows and understands his characters inside and out that he can reach back in time and conjure their younger selves.<\/p>\n

Havill begins this book, narrated in the first person by Undersheriff Bill Gastner, with Gastner relaxing one Wednesday night (with a book!), interrupted in the third paragraph with \u201cthe distant shriek of tires tearing rubber and the loud, dull whump that followed.\u201d A motor vehicle has crashed disastrously somewhere nearby, so Gastner alerts the sheriff\u2019s dispatcher and sets out to find the source of the noise.<\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t pretty.<\/p>\n

What follows over the next few days is the meticulous reconstruction of events that led to this tragedy. You might think an auto crash could not sustain investigative\u2014and reader\u2014attention for an entire novel, but Havill\u2019s skill lies in making this police procedural absolutely riveting. It proves that a crime story doesn\u2019t have to trot out a demented serial killer or imperil the US President and all of Congress in order to have stakes worth caring about.<\/p>\n

Each of Havill\u2019s characters is intrinsically interesting, and it\u2019s equally interesting to see how they work together as a team, which includes working around some spotty (and humorous) assistance from the police dispatchers.<\/p>\n

The care that Havill takes in reconstructing the crime and establishing the officers\u2019 logic in developing every last bit of evidence holds until near the book\u2019s end, when the author has the prosecutor, speaking before the grand jury, claim a type of evidence the authorities do not actually possess. While the grand jury might reach the same decision with or without this information, its decision is based on a totality of evidence, and the total is flawed. In a novel so thoroughly grounded in the step-by-step accretion of facts, this slip-up is jarring, and the book\u2019s title, Easy Errors,<\/em> turns ironic.<\/p>\n

Still, the rest of the book is so strong, this mistake isn\u2019t enough to discourage me from wanting to read more Posadas County mysteries. As a fan of the Longmire<\/em> tv series, based on Craig Johnson\u2019s books, I warmed to this one immediately.
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By Steven F. Havill \u2013 This is book 22 in Havill\u2019s Posadas County (New Mexico) mystery series and is a prequel to the \u00a0earlier books. Demonstrating how reader opinion is more than background noise to crime fiction writers, Havill says … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"****Easy Errors - present-day police procedural set in New Mexico--a great read!","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[54,632,126],"tags":[1200,1201,1199],"class_list":["post-6978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-detective","category-police","category-reading-2","tag-easy-errors","tag-new-mexico","tag-steven-f-havill"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1Oy","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6978"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6978\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6980,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6978\/revisions\/6980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}