The West Texas Novels of Tricia Fields

Tricia Fields writes a mystery series set in West Texas that explores how a small town chief of police, Josie Gray, leading a financially strapped department, deals with the increasing violence across the border in Mexico. Locale is a big part of Fields’ mysteries – the desert and the isolation that comes with it. Fields currently has two books in print. The Territory, which won the Tony Hillerman prize for best first mystery, and Scratchgravel Road.

The Sun-Sentinel dubbed Fields’ first novel the Best Debut Mystery of the Year, and further noted: “Buckle your seatbelts for an off-road trip full of adrenaline. Tough and determined to make her way in today’s Wild West, Josie is the type of police chief you’d want in your hometown, a gutsy new heroine who would be friends with Nevada Barr’s Anna Pigeon and probably Lori Armstrong’s Mercy Gunderson, too.” The Territory also earned a slough of starred reviews from the trades, including one from Publishers Weekly, whose reviewer observed: “Fields builds suspense with a well-wrought cast of characters who deal with deadly violence that’s particularly frightening for being all-too-believable. And no one does it better than Josie Gray, who persists in the face of unspeakable danger. Readers will want to see much more of her.” Library Journal also noted: “Fields’s rich plotting, nonstop action, and deft characterizations show the personal side of the larger issue of drug cartels on both sides of the border.”

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