PROLONGED EXPOSURE (Undersheriff Bill Gastner #6) (audiobook) by Steven F. Havill

Originally published in 1998.
Published in 2008 by Books in Motion. 
Read by Rusty Nelson.
Duration: 9 hours, 46 minutes.
Unabridged.

I have been reading the Bill Gastner series off and on again for nearly 10 years. This is one of those series that never really took off and became bestsellers, but it certainly should have. If you enjoy Tony Hillerman's Leaphorn and Chee novels then you should give this series a try.

Prolonged Exposure is book #6 in a series that depends on the reader having some at least some prior knowledge of the characters. I have read some of the earlier books and some of the later books so that I wasn't lost when it came to the non-mystery part of the story.

Bill Gastner is a cranky old undersheriff, which is an office in New Mexico. Basically, the sheriff of a county is an elected position and is designed to be held by someone who is not a member of law enforcement. An undersheriff is a professional who works with the sheriff and makes sure that things operate they way they are supposed to. He works in a fictional county along the border with Mexico.

In this novel there are two main story lines. The first one involves Bill Gastner's property. While he was out of state recovering from a surgery with his daughter his elderly neighbor dug a marked grave for his wife and buried her on the edge of Gastner's land. At first, he is tolerant and looks upon it sympathetically but once he starts to look into it, it starts to look weird, even by the standards of his small town.

The second is the story of a three year old boy who goes missing during a family camping trip. A manhunt ensues and the whole department starts to become suspicious that things may not be quite what they seem.

Rusty Nelson's reading of this audiobook was excellent. He created different voices for every character and even managed a series of pretty decent Mexican accents.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: Prolonged Exposure by Steven F. Havill.