Claire Booth’s Sheriff Hank Worth mysteries just continue to get better. Dangerous Consequences, the fifth in the series, can be read without having read previous books. However, there are several continuing storylines, including one I wasn’t familiar with because I never read the first book, The Branson Beauty. Even so, it didn’t take long for me to catch up to the characters involved in that story.

As in any police or sheriff’s department, there are ongoing cases, and new ones. Chief Deputy Sheila Turley is still dealing with the fall-out of the firing of insubordinate deputies and schedules without overtime pay. The remaining deputies are causing problems at the jail, but Turley and Worth hired three new ones, and they’re back from the five-month academy. Now, she just has to keep an eye on them, and she’s using the jail’s civilian clerk as her spy.

It’s Sheriff Worth’s wife, Dr. Maggie McCleary, who instigates a new investigation. She’s seen a rash of senior citizens, frail tourists over sixty-five, in the hospital’s emergency room. Maggie isn’t an investigator, but she can tell Hank that they’re coming in suffering from dehydration. She’s had ten of them in the last month, and it doesn’t take a doctor to determine they’ve all been on tour buses that went to breakfast shows at some of the local theaters. Hank knows he better look into it because Maggie recognizes trouble and possible elder abuse when she sees it.

That investigation doesn’t go far before there’s a report of a hit-and-run. It looks like the first responders have messed up Hank’s crime scene though. The victim is already dead, and it doesn’t look like she was killed at the scene. And, Hank recognizes her.

Along with lawsuits, problems at the jail, murder, and local theaters, there’s humor in the book as well. But, the best parts of the book bring Worth’s team together, cooperating on investigations. That’s actually my favorite aspect of police procedurals, whether it happens in Booth’s Hank Worth books, Steven Havill’s Posadas County ones, or ones that are very different, the Bill Slider mysteries by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles or Linda Castillo’s Kate Burkholder. Because I read for character first, I like to see the characters and teams united in their efforts.

If you’re a fan of small town police procedurals, you might want to try Claire Booth’s Sheriff Hank Worth series.

Claire Booth’s website is http://www.clairebooth.com/

Dangerous Consequences by Claire Booth. Severn House, 2022. ISBN 9780727823014 (hardcover), 240p.