Book picks similar to
Bad Way Out by C. Hoyt Caldwell


mystery
hillbilly-noir
poached-it
southern

The Other Side of the Bay


Sean Dietrich - 2014
    With reminiscence and narration, a local sheriff must comb through his own humid world to unravel the truth behind the death of a local boy. But it’s not as easy as it seems, because no one is talking. The Other Side of the Bay is a remarkable portrait of the unique people in the Panhandle of Florida. The story weaves itself into the tall longleaf forests, and along the crests of the uneasy bay, telling a tale of the human spirit. This is a novel of how things aren't always as black and white as they ought to be, and how right and wrong aren't always easy to tell apart. It's an evocative tale that delivers its reader to the apricot sun rises and sepulchral storm clouds of their own bittersweet memories.

The Threat


Jonas Saul - 2011
    Things go bad fast. During the deal on the fourteenth floor of an apartment building, the dealer disappears, and Drake is stuck in the apartment with a dead woman.The police are at the door. He has nowhere to go.On the run from the police and the maniacal killers intent on framing Drake for murder, he must uncover the truth before it is too late.There is a reason behind the madness that has become his life. That information takes him back twelve years to when he was hospitalized with a concussion and his fiancée went missing.The only way out is to clean up someone else's mess. The only way out is murder.Drake Bellamy didn't want to break the law, but now he is out for blood.

Armageddon Heights


D.M. Mitchell - 2014
    Two men, two stories, one breathtaking conclusion. The first man is Samuel Wade, an ex-soldier, on the run and blamed for the murder of his beloved wife and daughter. But he’s on the trail of the real murderer and is seeking revenge. He boards a coach bound for Edinburgh, hot on the heels of his one-time friend and army colleague John Travers – a man who was kidnapped and brutally tortured by insurgents. A man who blamed Wade for allowing it to happen. The man who killed his family. What happens next is totally unexpected and bizarre. Trying to sleep during a storm, Wade wakes to discover that the coach and its ten remaining passengers is no longer headed to Edinburgh. Impossibly, it’s in the middle of a vast, unknown and hostile desert, abandoned by its driver. Are they asleep, is it a dream? Are they all dead? So their nightmare begins. The second man is Robert Napier, second-in-command at Lindegaard Software, a company run by the powerfully wealthy Dale Lindegaard. Dale took over the business when his brother Jeremy and niece Melissa were brutally gunned down by an activist group known as CSL. Jeremy died, and Melissa was reduced to a vegetative state, and all because of Lindegaard’s complete control of a controversial new drug called tremethelene, used by millions worldwide. CSL was duly crushed, their leaders now in jail. But CSL has come back from the dead with a new leader called Charlie Sharland, threatening Dale Lindegaard’s tremethelene monopoly all over again. Lindegaard is determined to stamp them out for good and urges Robert Napier to do whatever it takes to rid him of them. Even murder. As Samuel Wade’s living nightmare in the desert grows ever more bizarre and terrifying, Robert Napier is forced to work with Dean Villiers, a cold, calculating and violently ambitious man. He is drawn ever deeper into the dark underbelly of a multi-billion dollar corporation, where violence and greed are the norm and nothing is as it first appears. Who is the mole known as Cobalt? Who and where is Charlie Sharland? Does he even exist? And what exactly is motivating the scheming Dean Villiers? Both men are out for revenge. Wade because of his family’s murder, Napier because of what happened to the vegetative Melissa Lindegaard, his wife-to-be. Both men’s lives are irrevocably intertwined. Both their stories will come crashing together in the terrifying, surprising, jaw-dropping climax of D. M. Mitchell’s undeniably original and most imaginative thriller to date. Dare you take a journey into nightmare?

The Gandy Dancer


Jeff Andrews - 2012
    His ex-wife is demanding more money. A woman he can’t even remember accuses him of fathering her child. Newspaper reporter Mitch Corsini shrugs and takes another drink. However, when his estranged teenaged daughter mysteriously disappears, his life finally has a purpose: find the child he's neglected for too long and rekindle the love they once shared. Mitch’s quest takes him to the Virginia mountains and his ancestral home. There, he finds himself locked in a life or death struggle to save his daughter as seventy-year-old family secrets and the fate of a long-forgotten railroad worker combine to shatter the very foundations of his world.

Blind Spot


William Casey Moreton - 2013
    He doesn't remember his own name, doesn't recognize the faces of anyone around him, there is a dead woman in his apartment, and a close friend has died suddenly in a tragic accident. The puzzle gets more complex by the hour as Nick struggles to piece together the holes in his memory, is questioned by police about a missing person, and becomes the target of a team of hired killers. Danger and mystery lurk around every corner, and as Nick soon discovers...the difference between friends and enemies is sometimes a very fine line.

Ollie Stratford Cozy Mysteries: 5 Book Box Set: An Ollie Stratford Cozy Mystery


N.C. Lewis - 2018
    Lewis's popular Ollie Stratford Cozy Mysteries series. Enjoy hour upon hour of good, clean, humorous, reading with characters you will grow to love! BOOK1: TEXAS TROUBLES Middle-aged Professor Ollie Stratford's been hounded by a psycho realtor, outrun by a bunch of grandma’s, taken advice from sock puppets, stuck in a brimming toilet bowl, and almost run out of college by a drunken professor. How is that for her first few days in a quiet little Texas town she never wanted to live in? BOOK 2: CREEK CRISIS When a mysterious Portuguese film producer hires Ollie Stratford's event center she thinks it is going to be fun and games... until the brawling and fisticuffs amongst the Divas break out followed by Murder! BOOK 3: BITTER BONES When the bones of beloved local, Garrick Markovich, turn up buried by the oil well, Ollie's dreams of financial stability are put in danger. Now, Ollie must uncover the secrets of tight lipped locals to find the killer and obtain justice for Garrick. BOOK 4: MAGIC MUMBLES Doctor Ollie Stratford loves a good mystery. But the last thing she ever expected was to stumble into one while relaxing at Mysterious Malcolm's Magical Masquerade show. When a body shows up during the show, and the Magician leaps from the stage and disappears, Ollie gets sucked into a world where everyone has a grudge, and no one is talking. BOOK 5: TEDDY TUMPIN Ollie is trying to live a normal life, in a normal Texas Hill Country town, with a normal event center business. All that changes when the high school homecoming brings a local hero back to town. Then strange things happen—including to Ollie—and a body appears unexpectedly in a most unusual place. As Ollie follows a twisted trail, she does not understand the terrible consequences that will result. Will Ollie and the gang be able to track down the killer before the next victim or is it already too late? Pick up this TOTALLY ABSORBING COZY MYSTERY BOXSET FULL OF STUNNING TWISTS AND TURNS.

Getting the Important Things Right


Padgett Gerler - 2012
    While Colonel Tom physically and emotionally batters his family, Ma’am escapes the turmoil with alcohol. Their children, Percy, Sis and Oops, with no adult guidance, learn to sidestep their family minefields alone. Percy longs for a loving relationship with his father but is unwilling to compromise his aspirations of owning a motorcycle repair shop to win his father’s love. Sis wants a strong mother who will stand up to her abusive husband but finds herself in an abusive marriage, as well. Baby Oops escapes the chaos by teaching herself to read at three and retreating to her own world where abuse and parental neglect can’t reach her. Siblings Percy and Sis forge a loving bond that will sustain them through the most poignant and tragic of circumstances. Whether it’s eating an entire chocolate cake in one sitting, playing Cuss Scrabble, double dating to the drive-in movie, or stealing their father’s car to hotrod in the wee hours, the brother and sister find unbridled joy in their friendship, despite the dysfunction swirling around them. Told with captivating grit, humor, and insight, this tale of family discord carries the Albemarles through decades of turbulence until tragedy teaches them to forgive and understand by GETTING THE IMPORTANT THINGS RIGHT.

Catharsis


Jonathan Face - 2011
    Its residents have secrets - or so they think. These will be exposed and their true natures revealed during an unexpected winter storm. Chaos unfolds as the snow falls, ushered along by the ghosts of the town's previous inhabitants. Acting on orders from some unknown power, it's their duty to see that the town gets the justice it has been lacking. If anyone's alive by dawn, they're either lucky - or innocent. This is Spring City's last night, but its citizens won't go quietly.

Above the Waterfall


Ron Rash - 2014
    Nestled in a beautiful hollow of the Appalachians, his is a tight-knit community rife with secrets and suspicious of outsiders.Becky, a park ranger, arrives in this remote patch of North Carolina hoping to ease the anguish of a harrowing past. Searching for tranquility amid the verdant stillness, she finds solace in poetry and the splendor of the land. A vicious crime will plunge both sheriff and ranger into deep and murky waters, forging an unexpected bond between them. Caught in a vortex of duplicity, lies, and betrayal, they must navigate the dangerous currents of a tragedy that turns neighbor against neighbor—and threatens to sweep them all over the edge.

The Pretty Dead Girls


Skylar Finn - 2020
    But when her older brother Mac becomes the main suspect, Savannah launches a secret investigation in order to clear her brother’s name. Savannah has inherited a gift, one that might reveal who the culprit is if she can stay one step ahead of the killer, who is closer than she thinks.

Eli's Town


Amy Cross - 2015
    This time around it's Holly's turn to make the journey, but when she arrives she discovers that not only is Eli missing, but the locals appear to be hiding something. Meanwhile, a strange curse seems to have struck the town. Every day, at exactly noon, one resident drops dead. Is the string of sudden fatalities just a coincidence? If it's something more sinister, why does no-one seem to be trying to uncover the truth? And what do these deaths have to do with the disappearance of Eli Denton, a strange old man who has barely even left his house in more than a decade? Eli's Town is a horror novel about an eccentric but seemingly harmless man who discovers a new way to live, and about his niece's desperate attempt to uncover the truth before she too succumbs to the town's mysteries.

The Death of Sweet Mister


Daniel Woodrell - 2001
    Like Holden Caulfield and Huck Finn, Shuggie Akins tells his story of a reluctant descent into the world of adults in this unforgettable and ultimately moving novel.

The Strawberry Hearts Diner


Carolyn Brown - 2017
    Yet here she is, watching her car literally go up in smoke—along with her last-ditch hope of staying with her cousin in Louisiana. When Jancy spies a Help Wanted sign hanging in the window of the quaint Strawberry Hearts Diner, the memories of the two years she spent there as a teenager—and the lure of the diner’s beloved strawberry tarts—are enough to draw her in and plant her feet…but only temporarily.Raised by parents who refused to settle anywhere for long, Jancy has never known what it is to have roots. Now that Jancy’s swept up by the warmth and character of this quirky little community—and by the pull of an old crush—it’s beginning to feel like home. She’s making friends and even discovering the sweetness of falling in love. But when the town is threatened, Jancy knows it will take more than its legendary tarts to save it. Can she fight for this little Texas town—knowing she might not stay forever?

Sweet Water


Christina Baker Kline - 1993
    When a grandfather she never knew bequeaths her a house and 60 acres of land in Sweetwater, Tenn., a restless young artist leaves New York to recover her past and rethink her future. Cassie Simon's mother Ellen died when Cassie was only three; raised in Boston by her grieving father, she never knew her maternal relatives. Unprepared for the thick veil of mystery that surrounds them, Cassie is especially bewildered by her brusque grandmother, whom rumor credits with hiding a terrible secret about Ellen's death. In alternating sections told from their respective points of view, Cassie and her grandmother fight their separate battles to cope with the truth about the tragedy. Kline perfectly renders each woman's voice: Cassie's, probing and often uncertain, propels the narrative and creates an appropriate level of psychological suspense; the grandmother's quavers with the weight of memory as Cassie's search forces her beyond family myth to a painful and perhaps dangerous truth. The result is a powerful, immensely readable tale of loyalty and betrayal, family and memory, made fresh by Kline's often beautiful and always lucid prose.