The Invader by Richard Wormser

 

Ken felt he'd have gone crazy sitting in an office staring at papers and talking to people who wanted to buy or sell houses or the like. And the time was long past when a married man could support himself decently by riding fence or punching cows. If the pay was good--being foreman one of the big spreads paid more than the county gave him--the owner was a movie star or a Texas oilman, and the ramrod had to go through three bookkeepers, a secretary, and an accountant, and a business manager before he could buy a sack of fence staples.

So Sheriff Ken Craigie would stick to driving the roads. He and his four deputies put in a thousand miles a day in the three cruisers and a Jeep that were the county fleet; Not that they expected to run into enough crime to pay for all that gas and oil and wear and tear, but because it was good crime prevention.

Not to mention that it was good public relations. Law abiding people like to know that the law was keeping an eye on them, and lawbreakers disliked the same thing and even proportion.

This Fawcett Gold Medal paperback from 1972 features the tag “From the Publishers of The Godfather” on the cover. The sales of that novel were so high you could feel the idea of, “Hey, all you Gold Medal authors out there, ya mind shoe-horning the mob into your tales?”

Mr. Wormser, a fine writer of Westerns, gives us a neo-Western that feels like something Brian Garfield may have offered us. Lots of desert country, lots of informed ranch lore [Mr. Wormer himself owned a ranch and writes of this authentically.] The mob element is introduced with subtlety and does not feel intrusive.

Until it is…

The first 2/3rds of this book are mighty enjoyable fare, then the author seems to realize he has to leave all this wonderful groundwork behind to get all La Cosa Nostra.

Here, the novel becomes rushed and reliant on Agatha Christie level plot machinations to make it work in the end.

Too bad, I was enjoying the ride and kinda sorta would like to see what Sherriff Craigie got up to if Mr. Wormser were left to his own devices.