“THE FATAL SAVING GRACE is not the first of Jim Nesbitt’s books I’ve read, but it is the best. That is not a slam on his earlier work. TFSG is outstanding.

It took nerve to reintroduce loose cannon private eye Ed Earl Burch to a formal law enforcement setting, but Nesbitt shows the inevitable friction while also showing how Burch was a stud cop in his day. The supporting cast plays well off of the protagonist and the dialog is always entertaining without drawing attention to itself.

What Nesbitt does best is create a sense of place. I’ll not go into the now-hackneyed “He makes the location a character” territory, but his descriptions, while never going on too long, gave me a sense of West Texas the way James Lee Burke does with Louisiana or Daniel Woodrell with the Ozarks, creating a sense of traveling somewhere without the expense or inconvenience.

I’m going to have to go back and look into some of the books I missed in this series while I wait for the next one, and I AM waiting for the next one.”

Thanks, brother. Warms my black heart on this frozen winter’s day.