THE TEXAS JOB by Reavis Z. Wortham

This review originally appeared in the February 2022 edition of the Historical Novels Review.

Tom Bell is a Texas Ranger assigned to pick up a murder suspect in East Texas during the oil boom of 1931. Sleepy former farming communities have been reshaped by oil derricks dotting the landscape, hastily made structures made of sheet metal and canvas, and sagging power poles “that hadn’t been there long enough for the creosote to dry.” Ranger Bell finds a murder victim on his way into town and soon learns that fast money and chaotic conditions have attracted seedy characters and a criminal element that seeks control of the “black gold.” His courageous, go-it-alone approach to confronting crime is noticed, and big-city gangsters intent on getting into the oil action send muscle down to East Texas to take care of him. But they are up against a fierce loner who knows how to handle a gun to deal with men as “crooked as a dog’s hind leg.”

Much detail is woven into East Texas settings, and colloquialisms are plentiful. Story pacing sometimes slows between action scenes with multiple glimpses of the Ranger taking coffee breaks (a few grains of salt will “cut down the acid”) and smoothing his thick mustache (until he “caught the habit”). But once the shooting starts, Ranger Bell and the book come alive. Author Reavis Z. Wortham has penned the Red River series and is a prolific newspaper and magazine columnist.