A 'Perfect Opportunity': Author Steven F. Havill returns readers to Posadas County for another mystery

Posadas may be a lightly populated fictional county in New Mexico, but author Steven F. Havill still finds plenty of stories to unearth there for his long-running Posadas County Mystery series.

“Perfect Opportunity” is the 26th and latest volume in Havill’s series.

A 'Perfect Opportunity': Author Steven F. Havill returns readers to Posadas County for another mystery

For many of the volumes in the series, Bill Gastner was the savvy, crime-solving sheriff. In “Perfect Opportunity,” Gastner is celebrating his 87th birthday in the new novel. Though he may be the ex-sheriff, he still keeps an eye out for possible wrongdoing.

Even if it is predawn. Gastner is driving his truck, his godson, Carlos, seated next to him. They observe a sheriff’s patrol car, emergency lights on, pulled in diagonally behind a pickup truck, partially on the roadway. The truck is hitched to a livestock trailer.

That scene soon reveals two dead young men. One is the pickup’s driver, Johnny Rabke, apparently stabbed to death. The other, found in the ditch beside the truck, reveals the body of Arturo Ramirez, a Mexican national whose brother was fatally beaned by a Rabke-thrown billiard ball the year before.

And was there a third party involved in the killing of Rabke?

In this scene-packed, generally well-paced police procedural, readers follow the investigation into the double murder as seen through the tireless work of Undersheriff Estelle Reyes-Guzman (Carlos’ mom) and her deputies.

The double murder is not the only villainy in the book.

Gastner reappears later. It is night and he is in an arroyo, at the helm of a four-wheel-drive wheelchair. Not a fictional vehicle. In fact, the book’s acknowledgement gives thanks to the manufacturer of this wheelchair, “helping the elderly stay independent and in touch with their world.”

From the arroyo, he espies above him a trestle supporting a railroad track for a train linked to NightZone, a popular tourist destination for hikers and birders. A chainsaw seems to have been used to cut into the trestle above the arroyo. It may not be the only damaged trestle along the rail line.

Gastner alerts police.

Who is behind the chainsaw activity? Is it the work of criminals? Is it simply mischief? Gastner thinks the criminals/mischief-makers set up a camera to film a weakened trestle, hoping for the train to fall and crash into one of the arroyos. Maybe they were planning to sell the video to a social media outlet.

The undersheriff and her department are on the case. Miles Waddell, the owner of the commercially successful tourist spot, “is constantly having problems with people wanting his money,” Havill said in a phone interview. “In this case, it’s just a bunch of dumb teenagers.”

Reyes-Guzman zeroes in on the possible involvement of local teens in the nighttime misbehavior. She learns that the teenagers have day jobs building a barbed wire fence not far from the train line. And they have chainsaws to fell trees. Hmmm.

Several passages dwell too heavily on quotes. One example is when the long-winded Dr. Francis Guzman is explaining the wounds of the two murdered young men. Dr. Guzman talks like the county medical examiner that he is.

True to small-town life, he’s also identified as the husband of the undersheriff.

In Havill’s imagination, Posadas is the least populated New Mexico county. “If it were real, it would be located in southwestern New Mexico between Lordsburg and Deming,” he said.

And Posadas shares a border with Mexico.

It usually takes Havill one year to 18 months to write a mystery. “I don’t rush it. I’m not in a hurry. When I think the manuscript is done, I give it to three readers,” said the 79-year-old author, who lives four miles outside of Datil.

The first reader is his wife, Kathleen. All three readers are helpful, Havill said.

In the next step, he further edits, then sends the corrected manuscript off to the publisher for more editing, Havill said.

“Perfect Opportunity” is published in hardback.

“I like to have the perfect souvenir, and the hardcover is the perfect souvenir,” Havill said. “Paperbacks don’t last and libraries don’t like them. A lot of people use Kindle. The electronic version probably sells 10 times what hardcover copies do. But it’s hard to do book signings with an electronic version.”