Review: A fresh entry in the state of Texas noir

Review of: The Burial Place

Author: Larry Enmon
Publisher: Crooked Lane Books
Source: Purchase, Half Price Books
Grade: B

The 19-year-old daughter of the Dallas mayor is missing. But when she’s white, rich, willful and pouting over her parents’ disapproval of her Hispanic boyfriend, is her disappearance a spoiled daughter’s snit or something more serious? 

Either way, it’s not good news for the mayor’s upcoming political campaign. Get her back, he tells Dallas police, but keep it quiet. Which is how a pair of detectives with reputations for unconventional investigations find the case dumped on them in Larry Enmon’s debut mystery/thriller, The Burial Place.

But with every day that passes since the girl’s disappearance, detectives Rob Soliz and Frank Pierce know the longer the case goes unsolved, the worse their chance of finding her alive. Their only clues—a Bible with the word Wormwood highlighted, and a homeless addict who has the same word tattooed across his back, courtesy of a stint in a mysterious religious cult.

Bound by their chief’s promise of secrecy to the mayor, Soliz and Pierce can’t seek help from other department members. Meanwhile, other law enforcement agencies are muscling in on the case, as clues that the victim and criminals have moved beyond the bounds of Dallas police jurisdiction. In a state as big as Texas, what are the chances that Soliz and Pierce will find the mayor’s daughter before Texas Rangers or FBI? Or before her kidnappers turn to greater violence? 

The clock ticks, political pressure builds. And each detective battles personal traumas that push them to the verge of giving up their careers.

Although The Burial Place is subtitled A Mystery, it reads like a thriller, with multiple viewpoints, including that of kidnap victim Katrina Wallace, who faces a timetable of her own as she threads her way through the deadly secrets of the cult members who have imprisoned her.

Author Larry Enmon knows crime—and policing. A veteran of the Houston Police Department and the U.S. Secret Service, he brings his inside knowledge of the gritty side of police work, from interdepartmental politics to the tedium of stakeouts, to the bond between partners willing to bend rules to protect each other. 

His way with language in The Burial Place can’t always match his grasp of tension and thrilling plot. But with a likeably quirky pair of detectives, a spunky female lead, and a keen eye and ear for his Texas setting, Enmon gives promise of more good things to come.