From a Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist of the American West comes the first installment in a mystery series as entertaining as the Montana sky is big
A self-made cattle baron with a bad habit of letting his stock graze on his neighbors’ property, Buster Hogue has stepped on plenty of toes in Midbury, Montana. But orneriness is a virtue in this rough and beautiful land, and Buster’s disputes have always ended amicably—until tonight. Shot in the head at a picnic outside town, the crusty old rancher is rushed to the hospital barely alive. On a night when the moon shone bright enough to take target practice by, no one saw who pulled the trigger or where the bullet came from.
With a plethora of motives and no real evidence, Sheriff Chick Charleston sets out to solve his first case of attempted murder. Aided by his eager sidekick, seventeen-year-old local pitching prospect Jason Beard, the sheriff employs every ounce of his wit, intelligence, and intuition to track down the ruthless sniper. The trail ends in a climactic showdown that will change the investigative duo’s lives forever.
Populated with a colorful cast of local characters and enlivened by a wry humor and A. B. Guthrie Jr.’s keen appreciation for the rhythms of small-town Western life, Wild Pitch is the story of an impossible crime and the two men clever enough to solve it.
A. B. Guthrie Jr. (1901–1991) was an award-winning American novelist, screenwriter, historian, and environmentalist. Born in Indiana, he was six months old when his father brought the family west to the Montana territory. Guthrie graduated from the University of Montana with a degree in journalism and worked as a reporter and editor for two decades before receiving a Nieman fellowship from Harvard University. During his grant year, he began to seriously pursue his interest in writing fiction. His first major novel, The Big Sky (1947), was followed by the Pulitzer Prize–winning The Way West (1949). Guthrie’s popular mystery series featuring Montana sheriff Chick Charleston earned a Silver Spur Award from the Western Writers of America and an award from the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. The five books in the series are Wild Pitch (1973), The Genuine Article (1977), No Second Wind (1980), Playing Catch-Up (1985), and Murder in the Cotswolds (1989). In 1954 Guthrie’s screenplay for the film Shane was nominated for an Academy Award.