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Dead Shot
By David Benjamin
(No. 4 in the Jim Otis crime series)
A high-school basketball star haunted by the ghost in the gym, a beautiful teenage girl, an outlaw biker bent on mayhem, a frazzled police chief. These are the plot elements in Dead Shot, the fourth in David Benjamin’s award-winning smalltown crime series, featuring local cop Jim Otis.
By now, David Benjamin’s readers have gotten to know Jim Otis and his troubles. In Jailbait, he tangles with teenage femme fatale Josie Dobbs. In Bastard’s Bluff, he has to cope with an outbreak of racist vandalism in little Hercules, Wisconsin—and an invasion by the FBI. In Woman Trouble, high-school cheerleader Carrie Crowfoot disappears and Jim Otis suspects … who else? Josie Dobbs.
In Dead Shot, the ghost of John Roszak, who died suddenly during a Herc High hoop game in 1969, has haunted the gym—according to local legend—ever since. When Roszak’s ghost begins to harass the team’s newest star, Stewart McCulloch, Stewy shrugs off the ghost story. But John Roszak is a stubborn ghost. So is Meryl Clark, Stewy’s new girlfriend—who believes the legend. Stubborn, too, is deranged biker Clay Lutz who returns to Hercules to steal away Meryl, the girl he left behind.
It’s up to Jim Otis to protect Stewy and Meryl—and Hercules—from both the spook in the gym and the killer on his Harley.
AWARDS: NYC Big Book Awards, Distinguished Favorite, Crime Fiction, 2023. Shelf Unbound Best Indie Books Notable 100, Mystery, 2023. Independent Press Awards, Distinguished Favorite, Crime Fiction, 2024.
Dead Shot
By David Benjamin
Price: $20
What they're saying
“David Benjamin has created characters I can ‘see’ in my mind. They’re quirky, funny, flawed, and genuine—especially Jim Otis, a disgraced big-city cop lucky enough to get himself hired as a smalltown police chief, who gets out of bed every morning to start another chapter in his redemption. He has two women who love him—a bright, teenage daughter and a cool, whip-smart girlfriend who teaches high school English.
The gritty crime episodes and Benjamin’s impressive descriptions of the ‘supernatural’ in Dead Shot are balanced nicely by the humor and byplay among the regulars at A’Jay’s. Hercules is a real Wisconsin town with real people.”
—Jared Lubarsky, editor, The Magazine