The Texas Job - Day 2 (August 2022)

 It's Day 2 of Bout-of-Books for August 2022 and I'm looking south and into the past.

The Texas Job by Reavis Wortham 

For western and historical fiction lovers alike. 

Reavis Wortham’s latest mystery thriller is “The Texas Job.” In this tale of hard men and gun slingers, you’ll meet Texas Rangers, cold-blooded killers, Oily oil men, crooked bank owners, and Chicago mobsters. 

Meet Texas Range Tom Bell. He’s a WWII veteran, a survivor of numerous gun battles, and already has a reputation as a successful fugitive tracker. Ranger Tom Bell is on the trail of Clete Feras, a killer who won’t think twice about murdering women and children. 

Just as Bell is arriving in Pine Top (in east Texas) on his buckskin, he’s flagged down by young Booker Johnston who stumbled across a dead woman in a dry river bed. Right away there’s a gun fight where Bell wings the shooter who sadly gets away. 

Quinn Walker, recently from Hog Eye, recently married to an oil land rich widow Mallie, has teamed up with Gene Phillips, also recently married. They are deeply involved in a scheme to buy up as much oil land and as many leases as they can. They don’t care about cost or lives.

They’ve hired Clete Feras, via Chicago mobsters, to kill off land owners who resist land sales.   

“The Texas Job” by Reavis Wortham is a ring-side seat in the scandals, swindles, and schemes of oil men of the 1920s and 1930. It’s a time of hard men, the depression, and too much money to be had in black gold. 

Set on the eve of the dustbowl, this gritty piece of historical fiction is a western and mystery rolled into one. Based on real events, it is set a decade after the 1920s oil strikes and land grabs from the lands of the Osage Indians in Oklahoma as described by David Grann in “Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI"

I loved the action which included an active investigation, gunfights, and a great car chase (sadly few horses). This one is based on real events of the 1931 Oil Gushers and Oil Boom. Best of all, it's set in a part of the country I don't know at all, East Texas.

I admit I was sucked into Reavis Wortham’s “The Texas Job”. The writing and the characters will stick with you for a long time. As it happens, “The Texas Job” is a backstory or prequel (although it's not identified as such) for Tom Bell’s early career. He’s already a seasoned Texas Ranger when you meet him in The Texas Red River Mysteries which begin with "The Rock Hole”.

I heard this author speak about his mystery / thriller / western and had to read it. It's set in the 1930s Texas during the oil boom. It takes it's theme and crimes from real events that affected the Cherokee and the Osage peoples in 1920s Oklahoma.