Samuel Craddock

Created by Terry Shames

The former police chief of the small town of Jarrett Creek, Texas, SAMUEL CRADDOCK, finds out retirement isn’t going to be quite as peaceful as he’d hoped.

Seems his replacement is a hopeless drunk who couldn’t “investigate his way out of an outhouse with two doors,” according to a local attorney.

So when Craddock’s old pal Dora Lee Parjeter is murdered, he reluctantly steps in, in A Killing at Cotton Hill (2013), the first in a promising new series.

Only problem–considering the purview of this site–is that when Craddock steps in, he does so well that he’s re-elected chief. Which makes him a cop, not a private eye.

Damn.

Still, a pretty good series, and despite the badge, Craddock operates in an independent mode familiar to fans of such lone wolf “cops” as Harry Bosch, Dave Robicheaux et al. Still, the cozy trapping of small town life–despite the surprising high murder rate–may give more hard-boiled fans pause.

UNDER OATH

• “Terry Shames does small-town Texas crime right, and A Killing at Cotton Hill is the real thing. It has humor, insight, and fine characters. Former chief of police Samuel Craddock is a man readers are going to love, and they’ll want to visit him and Jarrett Creek, Texas, often.”
  — Bill Crider
• “There may be no protagonist in our genre today as decently compelling as Samuel Craddock.
  And there may be no better chronicler of the character and complexity
  of small-town America than Terry Shames.”
   — William  Kent  Krueger

NOVELS

• A Killing at Cotton Hill (2013) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
• The Last Death of Jack Harbin (2014) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
• Dead Broke in Jarett Creek (2014) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
• A Deadly Affair at Bobcat Ridge (2015) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
• The Necessary Murder of Nonie Blake (2016) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
• An Unsettling Murder for Samuel Craddock (2017) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
• A Reckoning in the Back Country (2018) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
• A Risky Undertaking for Loretta Singletary (2019) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
• Murder at the Jubilee Rally (2022) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
• Guilt Strikes at Granger’s Store (2023) | Buy this book | Kindle it!

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.