FIRST CHANCE

Lansdale’s first novel introduces a private eye who flouts every rule of behavior in Hopeful, Texas.

Chance Kirby left journalism, the field she’d trained for, when it became clear that she wanted something more. Now John Kirby, the father who first learned of her existence when she was a teenager, and Harper Jones, his wife and partner in their own PI agency in nearby Willard, have given her enough money to start out on her own. Well, not exactly on her own, since she’s best friends with Isabella Lopez, the police chief in Hopeful, who looks “like a model that had been in a knife fight,” and often relies on the talents of Tia, her housemate and informal ward, a former con artist who at 14 already gives off an even sassier vibe than Chance. The agency’s first client, Darla Weaver, isn’t crazy about the rates Chance quotes her, but 10 months with no leads on Patience Milroy, the sister whose throat was cut shortly after she disappeared, have worn out her patience with the local police and other private eyes. Chance, who takes the case promising to do her best, soon finds that it’s all personal: Darla needs answers, Pat needs justice, and there turns out to be a trail of other young women killed the same way, whose connection to the case was overlooked because they were outside the Hopeful borders. Lansdale’s plotting relies heavily on coincidence and violence—the animal shelter Chance visits after Sissy, her beloved German shepherd, goes missing, is full of suspects who react to her questions with threats and worse—but the hardscrabble world the author creates is well worth visiting and revisiting.

At a certain point, the investigator confesses, “I really just wanted it to all be over.” But readers won’t.