Tony Hillerman: “Johnny Boggs has produced another instant page-turner, but this one, KILLSTRAIGHT, grabbed me in a particular way. It took me right back to my childhood in Indian Country where my playmates were mostly Pottawatomie and Seminole kids, and the landscape and the conversation that surrounded us were just like they are in Boggs’s book. However, those who didn’t grow up in Indian Country during the Great American Dust Bowl Depression are going to be more fascinated by this intricate plot. In the very first paragraph you find yourself watching a public execution and coming away from that a page or so later beginning to sense something was very wrong with one of those cases. After that, don’t put down the book until you finish it.”
Young Daniel Killstraight returns to the reservation after spending seven years back east, forced to travel the white man's road by learning their ways at the Carlisle Industrial School in Pennsylvania. After watching a childhood friend, Jimmy Comes Last, hang on the Fort Smith gallows for a grisly double-murder, Daniel is asked by his old friend's mother to prove that her dead son was innocent of the crime.
Yet Daniel has his own problems, trying to learn who he really is after being so far from his people for so long. Reluctantly, he joins the tribal Indian Police, and slowly begins to believe that Jimmy's mother was right, that her son wasn't guilty, and as he digs into the crime -- getting help from a Cherokee policeman and a deputy U.S. marshal -- he starts to uncover something much bigger than murder.
Set during the turmoil of the reservation years when Senator Henry L. Dawes was trying to bring an end to the reservation system, and its corruption, KILLSTRAIGHT is not only a murder mystery, but a story of a young Indian's journey to discover himself while disproving the stereotypical Western portrayals of Comanche Indians as soulless, bloodthirsty savages.
Publishers Weekly: “... the relationships and setting shine: Daniel — striving at once to solve the case and reconnect with Comanche ways — is a complex, winning protagonist.”
Booklist: “This is a rousing story with an emotional and philosophical depth that will surprise readers who don’t expect complexity from a western. Genre veteran Boggs also explores the clash between white and native cultures, presenting them as both fundamentally different and strikingly similar. Boggs is a nimble storyteller, comfortable with tackling complex issues of race and morality while keeping the story moving at a steady pace. A good bet both for fans of traditional westerns and for those who look for more literary fare.”
