Two friends of mine did me the high honor of praising my Ed Earl Burch hard-boiled crime thrillers this week, both of them fine authors in their own right who happen to enjoy their detective stories served up hot and nasty.

So, without further blather from me, here’s what Noel Holston, a colleague of mine at the Orlando Sentinel, and John W. Davis, an Athens buddy and ex-Cold War spook, have to say. First, Brother Holston, the pride of Laurel, Mississippi:

“My old newspaper colleague, friend, and pick-up basketball nemesis Jim Nesbitt — we were kind of like Br’er Rabbit vs. Br’er Bear — writes hard-boiled crime fiction these days. And I do mean hard.

Jim’s beat-up, badass Dallas PI, an ex-cop named Ed Earl Burch who’s partial to Duke Wayne and Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Lucky Strikes and Maker’s Mark, makes Mike Hammer look like Miss Marple.

Definitely not for the faint of heart, Jim’s novels, including “The Best Lousy Choice,” nonetheless offer wicked humor and a keen eye for the details of Texas terrain as well as brass-knuck action and language that would strip the paint off a Hummer.

I post this belated blurb now in part because the crime wave underway in our nation’s capitol has me feeling powerless and in need of a champion. Reading Ed Earl’s exploits is cathartic. I’d like to buy him a ticket to Washington, absolutely confident he would know which butts to kick and which heads to crack.”

And now for Brother Davis, penning a review of my latest Ed Earl book, The Fatal Saving Grace, still in the gentle hands of my editor, Cheryl Pellerin:

“Payback. Revenge. A psychopath wants Texas lawman Ed Earl Burch dead. It seems he wants the law dog murdered along with other residents of baked, dusty, searing, and lonely Cuervo County who all did him wrong. That, or there’s a serial killer on the loose. Is this gunrunner, trafficker and drug dealer really dead, as officially signed off and reported by the bent county coroner? After all, the white supremacist murderer was hit with enough lead from Ed Earl’s shooting iron to have killed a normal man. But finished off?   

     Ed Earl, recently restored to the golden badge of a Texas lawman, was once a Dallas murder investigator. His belief in doing right in a chaotic world of double crossers, wirepullers and charlatans is buried behind a lifetime of cutting deals with the devil. After all, this maybe-dead homicidal maniac is after him, and how Ed Earl finds him first might not be found in law schools. Know who did the killings piling up in Cuervo, and you can maybe track him easier through the dry, lizard, coyote, snake, and cactus needle infested countryside. A place where everything could kill you was as good a place as any to find a two-legged variety who fit right in.

     Nesbitt’s descriptions of the grays, reds, and blue-blacks of the vast Texas southwest scenery is breathtaking. You see what those who live there see. Descriptions so captivating they become another character. Each disheveled, airless trailer, each windblown barn, each rusting truck-filled yard surrounded by rust- colored fencing is so evocative you imagine you were there once. Likewise the human centipedes, scorpions and rattlers have personalities all their own. Nobody gets a break. Fat, vengeful, or ruthless, no matter which side, what trait, all are called what they are. After a while, you wonder what keeps people chasing one another through this bleak, wind-whipped place where hope seems to go and die.

     Despite everything, there is a form of justice. Despite cops on the take, Federal agents who arrive clueless and arrogant, local sheriffs who guard their egos and counties like private fiefdoms, it’s hard to imagine one, at least, who sees the light of justice at the end of tunnels of hate, anger, ingratitude and worse.

     Jim Nesbitt makes us aware of this much discussed and distressed part of America. With crimes and criminals aplenty, like prairie dogs hiding out across a chess board of abandoned hideouts, maybe-friendly faces, or partners in crime, this region is full of secrets. We see the whole Rio Grande border where payback is only something a human snake can plan.”

My sincere thanks for the kind words of two talented friends.