Showing results by author "Ben Rehder" in All Categories

An unidentified wild creature is on the loose in Blanco County, and, over the protests of game warden John Marlin, the locals have convinced themselves they're dealing with a mythical vampirish beast called a chupacabra. It doesn't help Marlin's cause when a dead body turns up with a fang-like wound in its neck.

Life in rural Blanco County, Texas, isn't what most folks would call exciting - and that suits game warden John Marlin just fine. He's happy to spend his days and nights protecting the local wildlife from poachers. But when the tequila-slamming, skirt-chasing treasurer of the local Rotary Club goes missing and his vehicle is found in the river the day after a flood, Marlin finds himself in charge of the search efforts.

Life can get a little wild from time to time for John Marlin, the game warden in Blanco County, Texas - but few incidents compare to the stories flying around town at the start of this new deer season. Hunters are reporting an incredible sight: A six-foot-tall, drop-dead gorgeous blonde is roaming the woods, searching out camouflage-clad men with guns and disarming them with powers of seduction the likes of which none of them have ever come across before. Everyone has a hearty laugh at the expense of a few embarrassed hunters, until one of their own turns up dead in the woods. Now Marlin has a real mystery to deal with.

It's the week before deer hunting season, as close to a statewide holiday as you get in Texas, and the locals are getting restless. Game Warden John Marlin has his hands full with poaching complaints coming in faster than he can write out-of-season tickets. Then a call of a different sort comes in. A man dressed up in some sort of deer costume has been shot at the Circle S ranch, and witnesses are reporting a massive wild-eyed buck prancing about the pasture in a lovesick frenzy.

Kendyl Jordan is a beautiful woman who drives an eye-catching classic car—until the car goes missing, possibly with something of great value hidden inside it. Can Roy Ballard help her find it? Despite Ballard’s budding reputation, Kendyl learns he’s not even a private investigator, he’s a legal videographer with very little experience. Still, he seems to have a knack for the job, and it doesn’t take him long to ID a couple of dangerous suspects. That’s when the case takes more twists and turns than a winding Texas Hill Country road.

When the 102-year-old inventor of an amazing new hunting product is murdered, the clues point toward the Endicotts, a controversial reality-show family. Did one of the members do something desperate to claim the invention as their own and boost their waning popularity? Blanco County game warden John Marlin intends to find out, if he can prevent his best friend from having a deadly run-in with the prime suspect. Stag Party is the eighth novel in Ben Rehder's hilarious Blanco County mystery series.

After a high-school football star dies in a late-night motorcycle collision with a wild pig, the boy's wealthy father comes up with a creative scheme to rid Blanco County of the feral pests: He tattoos the ear of one particular pig, then offers a $50,000 reward for anyone who shoots it. Game warden John Marlin is not pleased-chiefly because the bounty is likely to bring a wave of poachers and trespassers to the area. The tension rises even higher when the death of the local boy turns out to be more complicated than it originally appeared.

Ricky Delgado works as a chicken hanger at the poultry plant in Rugoso, Texas, a small border town just 30 miles south of Laredo. His quiet, illegal lifestyle is disrupted when he learns that his brother Tomás has been shot and injured shortly after crossing the border. Together, Ricky and Tomás and seek justice, or remain silent and endure the injustices common to all "wetbacks" within the states. Meanwhile, Ricky is fighting a battle within his own body, a disease he acquired in the poultry plant.

On opening day of dove season in Blanco County, Jimmy Ray Gladstone is confronted, then shot, by an attractive stranger with an unusual physical characteristic. But who is she, and how did she know about the robbery Jimmy Ray and his brother Russell had been planning? Game Warden John Marlin will have to figure it out on his own, because the sheriff’s office is stretched thin, Jimmy Ray has a head injury and isn’t making much sense, and Russell is nowhere to be found.

When Blanco County rancher Phil Colby encounters a beautiful trespasser bathing in his creek, he has plenty of questions, but she isn’t offering any answers. Before long, Colby realizes she’s on the run. But from what? Over time, he earns her trust, and she begins to share her story.