Out of good stuff to read... I went whining into my bookshop "I need a new author," I whaled. (My shop is quite used to this and JB, the floor manager, keeps a mental list of whine stoppers.) I came home with Briarpatch. Since I wasn't in a great mood to start with, I didn't start this book with an open mind. I was pissed at the whole world of publishing. But, Ross Thomas and his characters sucked me in right away. Ben Dill has to find out who killed his police detective sister and why and he does. The setting is a thinly veiled Oklahoma City and the cast of characters is real and the story is gritty and I loved it. The added bonus is that I knew going in that this was not a series so I didn't know until the last word whether my now good friend, Ben Dill, was going to make it out alive.