Meet the folks of Lantz, Texas

… where the secrets are impossible to keep and they serve up revenge with the cornbread and sweet milk.

Coming Soon

Gravel Roads & Shallow Graves

Prequel to Bloodlines & Fencelines

Sheriff Ray Crawford Osborn plans a vacation to East Texas to escape Lantz politics. It doesn’t turn out well.

Osborn and his wife have barely unpacked when the sheriff is bamboozled into helping solve a fifty-year-old mystery. A distant relative who walked out on his family has been found dead under suspicious circumstances. In his search for answers Osborn navigates an assortment of liars, tramps, thieves, and swindlers. He is shot and left for dead on a country road but keeps digging for the truth even after returning home to Lantz.

Bloodlines & Fencelines

Sheriff Ray Crawford Osborne is in over his head when someone murders the First Lady of Lantz, Texas.

Suspects include her persnickety husband who has financial problems, a businesswoman with a reputation for revenge, the victim’s daughter who bears a lifetime of psychological scars, a nasty local drunk, a combat veteran who came home from Afghanistan wearing the kind of battle scars you can’t see, the richest man in town who is nursing an open wound, and a young man who had a peculiar relationship with the victim. Osborne may not know much about detective work but he knows the secrets and lies of everyone in town.

About the Author

Evatt is a retired Texas journalist living in Austin. She spent most of her career in public communication, including on the faculty at Syracuse University. Evatt coauthored two other mysteries under the pen name Meredith Lee (Shrouded and Digging Up the Dead).

Praise for Bloodlines & Fencelines

“A twisty whodunit that’s crafted with care and saturated with down-home Southern charm.”

– Kirkus Reviews

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D.L.S. Evatt’s smart writing style oh-so-authentically captures life in a small country town. Bloodlines & Fencelines takes me right back to my own upbringing (without the murder, of course). Evatt’s fictional town of Lantz, Texas is populated with memorable characters whose secrets, lies, gossip, and innuendo leave one wondering which way is up. Sure does feel like home

– Mikki Daughtry, New York Times bestselling co-author of Five Feet Apart and All This Time

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D.L.S. Evatt is one of the freshest voices in crime fiction today. With scalpel-sharp prose and twisty plots, Evatt’s propulsive writing will keep you guessing until the final pages!

– May Cobb, award winning author of Big Woods and The Hunting Wives.

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Evatt’s experience as a political reporter adds zing to this story of backroom deals, intertwined lives, dark deeds, regrets, and lost loves that unfold after a small town grande dame is murdered. Readers will hang on every word of Sheriff Ray Osborne, a sharp-witted, fast-thinking, charismatic storyteller, from his opening sentence to his last hurrah. It’s easy to imagine myself sitting on a porch with him, throwing back a few cold ones, and trading tall tales.

– Helen Currie Foster, author of Ghost Daughter, Book 7 in her Alice MacDonald Greer Mystery series.

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Bloodlines & Fencelines is a quintessential whodunit. Full of humor and heart, Evatt dishes out enough unexpected twists to keep readers turning the page.

– Jennifer Love Hewitt, New York Times best-selling author of The Day I Shot Cupid.

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If Thornton Wilder had written a murder mystery set a small Texas town it might have turned out like Bloodlines & Fencelines. A narrator with a Texas twang spins an intricate yarn of murder and revenge by introducing a truck load of townspeople whose little acts have big consequences.

– Miles Arceneaux, author of Hidden Sea, the latest in a much-praised adventure and intrigue series set on the Texas Gulf Coast.

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