“[So] good I wish I’d written it. The poetic and bloody ground of west Texas has given birth to a powerful new voice in contemporary western crime fiction.”—Craig Johnson, New York Times bestselling author of the Walt Longmire series In this gritty crime debut set in the stark Texas borderlands, an unearthed skeleton will throw a small town into violent turmoil. Seventeen-year-old Caleb Ross is …
Seventeen-year-old Caleb Ross is adrift in the wake of the sudden disappearance of his mother more than a year ago, and is struggling to find his way out of the small Texas border town of Murfee. Chris Cherry is a newly minted sheriff’s deputy, a high school football hero who has reluctantly returned to his hometown. When skeletal remains are discovered in the surrounding badlands, the two are inexorably drawn together as their efforts to uncover Murfee’s darkest secrets lead them to the same terrifying suspect: Caleb’s father and Chris’s boss, the charismatic and feared Sheriff Standford “Judge” Ross.
Dark, elegiac, and violent, The Far Empty is a modern Western, a story of loss and escape set along the sharp edge of the Texas border. Told by a longtime federal agent who knows the region, it’s a debut novel you won’t soon forget.
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As tough as the Texas landscape. Well done.
First book I’ve read by J.Todd Scott and it was outstanding!
Excellent story line with even better writing style. Excellent book!
Good read!
Good story but badly in need of a decent editor. Mistakes in timing, repeats, syntax, what had already been discussed between characters. My basic appreciation of protagonist kept me reading but can not recommend the book without a professional edit
Started out pretty good but before it ended it was just not believable.
Brutally bad. Don’t even pick it up. Disjointed and just plain boring.
This was a pretty good story. Would have liked to have known what happened to wife number four, but mostly felt satisfied with the ending.
The annoying use of Spanish so often as if to make sure everyone knows the author is literate in Spanish, was the only downside to this book. What did I miss by not knowing Spanish? Was it something I needed to know to understand the story?
Most of the characters weren’t likable, but you can relate to them. Still up in the air about reading another by this author.
Didn’t flow well, took a while to figure out how the characters fit into the story. Would like to have have found out what happened to the woman who disappeared.
One of the best book I have read in a long time..a story that will be hard to forget. Lo9king forward to next book. A great new author.
This book was filled with the tragedy of lost lives. The writing felt true, but the lives depicted were so depressing it wasn’t an easy read.
The way the author developed both the characters and the story was excellent. I never write reviews, but I made an exception for this book. Read it!
Good characters, moves quickly, lead man good enough to make you want to read more.
Descriptive of small town society but as a section of the country which I’m not familiar. The culture there is different from the rural bubble in which I live. Being unfamiliar, the underlying problems at least “feel” plausible.