{"id":7374,"date":"2018-07-23T07:09:14","date_gmt":"2018-07-23T11:09:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7374"},"modified":"2018-07-23T07:09:14","modified_gmt":"2018-07-23T11:09:14","slug":"texas-two-step","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7374","title":{"rendered":"****Texas Two-Step"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"cowboy

photo: Robert Stinnett, creative commons license<\/p><\/div>\n

By Michael Pool \u2013 In this novel of crimes, both petty and not-so, Michael Pool takes you from the laid-back atmosphere of Colorado, where marijuana growing, possession, and sale is legal to rural Teller County in East Texas where it definitely is not. The county\u2019s official policy is strictly anti-pot, rigorously enforced by its long-time sheriff, Jack Gables, who is especially diligent if he isn\u2019t getting a cut of the action.<\/p>\n

Transplanted Texans Cooper Daniels and Trevor Davis, close friends from childhood, have been living in Colorado for years. They think of their Texas drug deal as just going home for a spell, but home has changed, and they\u2019ll have to dance a pretty lively two-step to stay out of jail and, maybe, out of the cemetery.<\/p>\n

Cooper believes it\u2019s worth the risk of selling his organic crop to the sketchy Texas drug dealer, \u201cSancho\u201d Watts, because he\u2019s vowed this deal will be his last. He\u2019s turning a new leaf and has sworn to acquire himself a legitimate career to please his pregnant girlfriend. If he doesn\u2019t shape up, she\u2019s leaving him.<\/p>\n

Cooper and Davis seem like good-natured stoners, but Watts is a wild man. Some time before the story starts, Watts sold a psychedelic drug to the grandson of a Texas state senator, and the boy killed himself. Now the legislator wants revenge, and he\u2019s tapped Texas Ranger Russ Kirkpatrick to get something on Watts\u2014anything, just so it puts him in jail for a long stretch.<\/p>\n

To Kirkpatrick, the senator is a pest with a strong sense of entitlement. But the politician is not letting go, and if Kirkpatrick doesn\u2019t produce, he\u2019ll be a Ranger no more. While he\u2019d rather not have this assignment, he has it, and it leads him to Teller County where the sheriff is notorious for pulling in the welcome mat when out-of-town law enforcement arrives.<\/p>\n

Sancho Watts has teamed up with a Teller County celebrity, and you\u2019d have to appreciate how much Texans love their football to understand the full significance of this partnership. The young man is former University of Texas footballer Bobby Burnell who lost his budding pro football career in a freak accident.<\/p>\n

The separate strands of the story move smoothly toward an inevitable showdown, the outcome of which could go a number of different ways, most of them disastrous. Focusing on the action, Pool is light on description, and he writes good, humor-laced dialog. This is a book for fans of how things are done in Texas. Big. Very big.
\n<\/a>\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Michael Pool \u2013 In this novel of crimes, both petty and not-so, Michael Pool takes you from the laid-back atmosphere of Colorado, where marijuana growing, possession, and sale is legal to rural Teller County in East Texas where it … 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":"****Texas Two-Step - a sleepy Texas backwater may not be the best place for Cooper and Davis to unload their homegrown crop of pot (it IS organic).","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":[440,52,54,126],"tags":[1371,1369,285,1370],"class_list":["post-7374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adventure","category-crime","category-detective","category-reading-2","tag-drugs","tag-michael-pool","tag-texas","tag-texas-two-step"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1UW","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7374","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=7374"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7374\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7376,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7374\/revisions\/7376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}