Samantha Jayne Allen won the Tony Hillerman Prize for her debut novel, “Pay Dirt Road,” published in 2019. Hillerman, not a native American, grew up in Oklahoma, among American Indians, and published 18 novels featuring Joe Longhorn and Jim Chee, Navajo Police officers. These books, especially “Skinwalkers,” “The Blessing Way” and “A Thief of Time” were prizewinners, hugely successful. The Hillerman Prize is for the best first, unpublished mystery novel, set in the American Southwest.
Allen’s novels, so far, contain no Indian characters at all, but are very much about life in the fictional small town of Garnett, Texas. In “Pay Dirt Road,” Annie McIntyre has returned home after college with no real plan. She is waitressing when a high school friend, Victoria, goes missing. She insists on helping in the search with her grandfather and aunt, who run a private detective agency. Through perseverance, Annie is successful.
When “Hard Rain” begins, she is working as an “intern” in the family business. An old friend asks for help. Bethany Keller, wife of the reverend John David Keller, is vacationing in a small A-frame house with two friends, Michael Davis and his wife Kendall. John David, we are told, has been called to visit a parishioner.
A sudden huge rainstorm breaks and the building is flooded, Michael and Kendall trapped and drowned and Bethany swept off a balcony into the Geronimo River. She is doomed, it seems, but is miraculously rescued by a stranger described as wearing a red T-shirt with a blue rose tattoo on his forearm and, most unusually, having “a narrow face, strong brow, shoulder-length honey-blonde hair, and short beard.” “Honestly,” Bethany says “he looked just like the paintings you see of Jesus.”
The good Samaritan stranger is swept away by the waters and, in her gratitude and guilt, the traumatized Bethany hires Annie to find him and thank him or at least to discover who the stranger was and thank his family. Grandfather and aunt agree to let her work this case solo.
Annie begins: the least experienced and least prepared detective ever. She is neither large nor strong. Annie has no combat skills: no karate, judo, boxing, what have you. She carries no weapon until she is persuaded to carry a pistol but she tells her aunt: “I’ve only shot a gun like twice in my life.” She is poor at surveillance and slow to realize when she is being followed.
Nevertheless, Annie learns who the brave stranger was and in the course of the investigation around the usually dusty, boring town uncovers crimes of all sorts: drug trafficking, crooked real estate and insurance deals, some unsavory behavior among the clergy. The publicity materials describe the town of Garnett, Texas as “hardscrabble.” That’s a compliment.
