The Bird Boys by Lisa Sandlin

Cinco Puntos Press, 306 pages, $16.95 (c2019)

“The Bird Boys” has been nominated for an Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original.

I read a couple of good reviews of “The Bird Boys,” so I was excited to read it, but I don’t think I ever got the rhythm of the words right in my head. Was it too colloquially Southern? I don’t think it was quite that; I’ve read lots of southern mysteries — not that “southern” has one sound (don’t send me emails). Maybe it felt too1950s to me: the manners, the set-up, the characters. Maybe it was the odd combination of all those factors. Whatever. “The Bird Boys” actually is set in1973 Beaumont, Texas, and it is set quite thoroughly and completely in that year. Amid broadcasts of the Watergate hearings, music prompts, and movies playing at the local theater, the author, Lisa Sandlin, makes sure to direct your attention to the time period.

This is the second outing for the detective duo of private investigator Tom Phelan and his assistant, Delpha Wade. I have not read the first book, “The Do-Right,” so it was a big first step to enter where that book left off. Delpha had been stabbed by a murderer at the end of “The Do-Right,” so she is recovering — apologies if this should be a spoiler alert — at the start of “The Bird Boys.” I also started off on the wrong foot with the assumption that this would be Tom Phelan’s book, but it was most definitely Delpha Wade’s.

After polishing off the leftover questions left by the first book, Sandlin plunges into Tom and Delpha’s next case. And I do mean to say the case was also Delpha’s, although she is putatively Tom’s secretary and receptionist. They are still feeling out the tenor of their professional relationship. Tom is a newly minted P.I. and Delpha was newly freed into the world from prison, where she sat for fourteen years, from the age of eighteen to just recently. She was lucky to have found a job with someone who sympathized with her conviction for murdering her rapist.

Mr. Bell, a man in his seventies, walks into their office and asks them to find his younger brother, estranged from him for many years. Rumor has it he is in Beaumont and living under an alias. Tom and Delpha rummage through phone books, birth records, and real estate records to find the brother, but instead they find there is a mystery to unravel about Mr. Bell first.

Delpha’s life is rich with friendships and new experiences. It is as though she has been reborn. But she is a baby with a wealth of prison experience to bolster her up. She is tenacious, loyal, responsible, and smart. The people who provide dimension to her life include a reference librarian, the cook at the retirement boarding house across the street from the office, and a teenager who sees apparitions.

Tom has people too, including his uncle, the sheriff, someone who is not always willing to help his nephew’s fledgling business. Tom seems besotted by the women in the book: Delpha and another client they take on further in the story. That’s all I have to say about Tom. (Perhaps I need to read the first book, huh.)

There are edges of humor and a definite unusual cadence in the telling. The mystery of the brothers is convoluted, reminding me at times of the convoluted plot in the movie “Chinatown.” (The derivation of the title is one of those convolutions!) There is weight to the little scenes. For instance, at one point, Tom pierces Delpha’s ears for new earrings. It is a tender and quietly majestic scene. There are lots of such meaningful little scenes strung together. And that, I think, is why people loved it.