Review: THE FAR EMPTY by J. Todd Scott

I reviewed The Far Empty (G.P. Putnam's Sons) by veteran DEA agent J. Todd Scott for Lone Star Literary Life. I call this "border noir." From the review:

�The Far Empty is a work of fiction, more or less.� 

Fictional Murfee, Texas, is the seat of fictional Big Bend County (�where there�s more blood in the ground than water�), situated on the very real border with Mexico, where desperation and ambition meet avarice, hubris, and drug-fueled insanity. Seventeen-year-old Caleb Ross desperately wants to escape no-account little Murfee, not least because he believes his father is responsible for his mother�s disappearance. Quiet and perceptive, Caleb feels guilty and cowardly because he hasn�t confronted his father, and he�s wound tight from living with a human rattlesnake. 

Caleb�s father is Sheriff Stanford �Judge� Ross, a hard, arrogant, murderous man who rules Big Bend County like a feudal estate. People in his orbit have a habit of disappearing and/or dying. Rookie deputy Chris Cherry is a former high school football star, reluctantly returned to Murfee after a devastating knee injury. When Chris discovers a body on a remote ranch, he and Caleb eventually join forces, and as the Sheriff�s secrets emerge, the whole Walking Tall scenario in Big Bend County begins to disintegrate.

Click here to read the entire review.