The legendary Austin band called True Love plans a one-night reunion, but when the band starts playing musical beds, a band member is assassinated, drugs are missing, and local rock critics are being murdered, bassist Martin Fender decides to investigate

Rock Critic Murders

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Sublett, Jesse

Mystery

Dell

The legendary Austin band called True Love plans a one-night reunion, but when the band starts playing musical beds, a band member is assassinated, drugs are missing, and local rock critics are being murdered, bassist Martin Fender decides to investigate

Literature & Fiction

United States

The Viking Press

When bass player Martin Fender awakens after a late-night gig to find that the woman he picked up the night before has been brutally bludgeoned with his bass, the jazz musician must clear his name

Tough Baby (Viking Mystery Suspense)

VIKING

Broke and living in an L.A. ghetto, bass-player Martin Fender jumps at the opportunity to record a song for five hundred dollars, but when his employer is killed, Fender must solve a mystery involving backwoods drug casualties.

Boiled in Concrete: A Martin Fender Mystery

Homer Maxey was a war hero, multimillionaire, and pillar of the Lubbock, Texas, community. During the post-World War II boom, he filled the West Texas horizon with new apartment complexes, government buildings, hotels, banks, shopping centers, and subdivisions. On the afternoon of February 16, 1966, executives of Citizens National Bank of Lubbock met to launch foreclosure proceedings against Maxey. In a secret sale, more than 35,000 acres of ranch land and other holdings were divided up and sold for pennies on the dollar. By closing time, Maxey was penniless. Maxey sued the bank and every member of the board of directors, including long-time friends and business partners. Almost fifteen years, two jury trials, and nine separate appeals later, the case was settled on September 22, 1980. Broke, Not Broken, the story of this record-breaking, precedent-setting legal case, illuminates a community and a self-styled go-getter who refused to back down, even when his opponents were old friends, well-heeled leaders of the community, a bank backed by powerful Odessa oil men, and the most formidable attorneys in West Texas.

Broke, Not Broken: Homer Maxey's Texas Bank War (American Liberty and Justice)

Spivey, Broadus

Business & Money

Texas Tech University Press

Ronnie Earle was a Texas legend. During his three decades as the district attorney responsible for Austin and surrounding Travis County, he prosecuted corrupt corporate executives and state officials, including the notorious US congressman Tom DeLay. But Earle maintained that the biggest case of his career was the one involving Frank Hughey Smith, the ex-convict millionaire, alleged criminal mastermind, and Dixie Mafia figure. 
With the help of corrupt local authorities, Smith spent the 1970s building a criminal empire in auto salvage and bail bonds. But there was one problem: a rival in the salvage business threatened his dominance. Smith hired arsonists to destroy the rival; when they botched the job, he sent three gunmen, but the robbery they planned was a bloody fiasco. Investigators were convinced that Smith was guilty, but many were skeptical that the newly elected and inexperienced Earle could get a conviction. Amid the courtroom drama and underworld plots the book describes, Willie Nelson makes a cameo. So do the private eyes, hired guns, and madams who kept Austin not only weird but also riddled with vice. An extraordinary true story, Last Gangster in Austin paints an unusual picture of the Texas capital as a place that was wild, wonderful, and as crooked as the dirt road to paradise.

Last Gangster in Austin: Frank Smith, Ronnie Earle, and the End of a Junkyard Mafia (Jess and Betty Jo Hay)

History

Americas

University of Texas Press

Last Gangster in Austin: Frank Smith, Ronnie Earle, and the End of a Junkyard Mafia

Timmy Overton of Austin and Jerry Ray James of Odessa were football stars who traded athletics for lives of crime. The original rebels without causes, nihilists with Cadillacs and Elvis hair, the Overton gang and their associates formed a ragtag white trash mafia that bedazzled Austin law enforcement for most of the 1960s. Tied into a loose network of crooked lawyers, pimps and used car dealers who became known as the traveling criminals, they burglarized banks and ran smuggling and prostitution rings all over Texas. Author Jesse Sublett presents a detailed account of these Austin miscreants, who rose to folk hero status despite their violent criminal acts."

1960s Austin Gangsters: Organized Crime That Rocked the Capital

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

History Press Library Editions

Timmy Overton of Austin and Jerry Ray James of Odessa were football stars who traded athletics for lives of crime. The original rebels without causes, nihilists with Cadillacs and Elvis hair, the Overton gang and their associates formed a ragtag white trash mafia that bedazzled Austin law enforcement for most of the 1960s. Tied into a loose network of crooked lawyers, pimps and used car dealers who became known as the "traveling criminals," they burglarized banks and ran smuggling and prostitution rings all over Texas. Author Jesse Sublett presents a detailed account of these Austin miscreants, who rose to folk hero status despite their violent criminal acts.

1960s Austin Gangsters: Organized Crime that Rocked the Capital (True Crime)

The History Press

Homer Maxey was a war hero, multimillionaire, and pillar of the Lubbock, Texas, community. During the post-World War II boom, he filled the West Texas horizon with new apartment complexes, government buildings, hotels, banks, shopping centers, and subdivisions. On the afternoon of February 16, 1966, executives of Citizens National Bank of Lubbock met to launch foreclosure proceedings against Maxey. In a secret sale, more than 35,000 acres of ranch land and other holdings were divided up and sold for pennies on the dollar. By closing time, Maxey was penniless. Maxey sued the bank and every member of the board of directors, including long-time friends and business partners. Almost fifteen years, two jury trials, and nine separate appeals later, the case was settled on September 22, 1980. Broke, Not Broken, the story of this record-breaking, precedent-setting legal case, illuminates a community and a self-styled go-getter who refused to back down, even when his opponents were old friends, well-heeled leaders of the community, a bank backed by powerful Odessa oil men, and the most formidable attorneys in West Texas.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Sublett, Jesse. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Sublett, Jesse

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Sublett, Jesse. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Rock Critic Murders

Rock Critic Murders

Tough Baby (Viking Mystery Suspense)

Boiled in Concrete: A Martin Fender Mystery

Broke, Not Broken: Homer Maxey's Texas Bank War (American Liberty and Justice)

Last Gangster in Austin: Frank Smith, Ronnie Earle, and the End of a Junkyard Mafia (Jess and Betty Jo Hay)

Last Gangster in Austin: Frank Smith, Ronnie Earle, and the End of a Junkyard Mafia

1960s Austin Gangsters: Organized Crime That Rocked the Capital

1960s Austin Gangsters: Organized Crime that Rocked the Capital (True Crime)

Broke, Not Broken: Homer Maxey's Texas Bank War (American Liberty and Justice)