From afar, it’s always tempting to lump Baron R. Birtcher’s Sheriff Ty Dawson mysteries with other modern-day Westerns such as Craig Johnson’s Longmire series or the Joe Pickett novels of C.J. Box.

Be a big mistake if you do.

Nobody — and I mean nobody — writes with the lyric and literary grit and grace Birtcher brings to a story. That singular gift lifts his novels to a higher plane that other writers rarely attempt let alone achieve. And it elevates Dawson, a rancher, combat veteran and reluctant sheriff, to near iconic status as a defender of rural Oregon traditions and values against the encroaching modern world of America’s bicentennial year.

That’s the time frame of Birtcher’s latest, Knife River — 1976. It’s a turbulent era when the aftermath of Vietnam, Watergate and the Kennedy and King assassinations still shook the country while inflation and economic stagnation undermined the confidence and sense of self of many Americans.

And that’s the swirling flood tide Dawson sees and feels as he confronts an unfolding mystery where the horrific suicide of a teenaged girl more than a decade earlier breaks from the willful community amnesia that buried the tragedy, rising to fuel a present-day threat centered on a music promoter, a young rock star and a thuggish group of railroad bums and day laborers.

Dawson, who was still in the Army at the time of the earlier tragedy, picks away at the young girl’s death and the cover story his crooked predecessor cooked up, sensing an unsolved crime and unresolved guilt that still stains and shames his friends and neighbors — the people he has sworn to protect. Almost nobody wants to talk about this but Dawson is stubbornly persistent and finds the few who will.

At the same time, he is dealing with the promoter and his plans to build an amphitheater at his remote recording studio compound to hold a concert by the rock star that will be filmed to promote his latest album. They butt heads immediately but reach a tense truce that allows the project to unfold under Dawson’s uneasy vigilance.

Birtcher draws on his own experience as a professional musician and music promoter to provide the telling details that richly authenticate these passages. Birtcher also grew up in an Oregon ranching family, which is the foundation of the Dawson character and the lush descriptions of life raising cattle in stunning country.

The young girl’s story is deftly told in a series of ‘interludes’ that include her star-crossed attraction to a troubled boy and two abusive fathers raising the girl and boy on their own. As these sections slowly build toward a gruesome end — the girl hanging in a tree, a suicide that wasn’t — Dawson slowly realizes the past and present may well be connected. His sense of dread becomes almost overpowering as he scrambles to fully unravel the mystery and head off a cataclysmic disaster that provides the final piece of the puzzle.

Do yourself a favor. Pick up Knife River then start reading the rest of Birtcher’s Ty Dawson mysteries. Each one is a jewel that outshines others of its kind.