WINNER OF THE SPUR AWARD FOR BEST WESTERN CONTEMPORARY NOVEL

EDGAR AWARD FINALIST FOR BEST FIRST NOVEL

SHAMUS AWARD FINALIST FOR BEST FIRST NOVEL

Rodeo Grace Garnet lives with his old dog in a remote corner of Arizona known to locals as El Hoyo. Retired from the rodeo circuit and scraping by on piecework as a bounty hunter, warrant server, and divorce snoop, he doesn’t have much choice but to say yes when hired to solve the murder of an Indian teenager, whose death is part of a mysterious rompecabeza—a classic crime puzzler—that includes multiple killings, cold-blooded betrayals, and low-down scheming, with Rodeo caught in the middle.

Bad Country is a noir novel that is as deep and twisty as a desert arroyo. With confident, accomplished prose, CB McKenzie captures the rough-and-tumble outer reaches of the Southwest in a transfixingly original style that transcends the traditional crime novel.

A native Texan, CB MCKENZIE has through-hiked the Appalachian Trail and worked as a housepainter, haute couture model, farmhand, and professor in a wide variety of locales around the world, including New York and Vermont, Miami and Milan, Tokyo and Tucson. He earned both an M.F.A. and a Ph.D. from the University of Arizona. Though he currently lives in California, he still keeps his pickups in Tucson and Texas. Bad Country is his first novel.