Virgil Cain

Accolades for Brad Smith’s celebrated crime novels include a nomination for the coveted Dashiell Hammett Prize. In Smith’s novel Red Means Run, prominent attorney Mickey Dupree is found dead at Burr Oak Golf and Country Club. On record as hating Mickey, small-time rancher Virgil Cain quickly becomes the prime suspect. Virgil knows the fix is in—so he sets out to find the real killer.

Brad Smith continues to make a name for himself as a darkly comic crime novelist. His second mystery starring Virgil Cain, Crow’s Landing finds the jack-of-all-trades out for a day of fishing on the Hudson River. But when he reels in a strange steel cylinder, a crooked cop quickly seizes it - along with his boat. Soon Virgil is teaming up with Dusty, a single mom who seems to know a little too much about the cylinder and its contents.

In upstate New York, Virgil Cain is drawing hay behind his team of massive Percherons when two movie scouts show up and offer $500 a day to use the horses in a film to be shot in the area. Virgil, in need of cash, reluctantly pockets the money, but he soon finds the chaotic set of Frontier Woman to be more trouble than it's worth. Savvy producer Sam Sawchuk is in over her head; when she's not propping up her talent-challenged husband-cum-director, she's trying to keep tabs on a new investor, casino owner Ronnie Red Hawk, a rambling egomaniac with designs on an infamous starlet.

In upstate New York, Virgil Cain's draft horses are pulling hay in the fields when two film scouts offer him $500 a day for their use in a film. He pockets the money, but the chaotic set of Frontier Woman turns out to be more trouble than it’s worth. Producer Sam Jonson clearly has her heart in the wrong place with her husband-cum-director Robb, who costs her a major financier, not to mention the Native American casino owner Ronnie Red Hawk, who has a vested interest in an alternate leading lady. After one - and then a second - young woman is found dead, Virgil discovers that more is at stake than the interests of a casino magnate….