First in the series about C. J. Floyd, a black bail bondsman and bounty hunter in Denver, Colorado. Floyd is hired to track a woman involved in an anti-ranching environmental terror group and find some important documents she holds. Floyd finds where she is, but when he arrives there it is to find the sheriff investigating her murder, and no documents in sight.

I found it hard to get into the book, mainly because C. J. seemed more macho than is my taste, but I was soon won over, both to the characters and the pleasure of an interesting plot. ( )

CJ Floyd is a bail bondsman in Denver's historically black Five Points district, who seems to have a propensity for going beyond the requirements of his job and doing a little detecting along with providing bonds. This novel is the first of a series about Floyd by Robert Greer. I read it to get some background before reviewing Greer's Blackbird, Farewell for the Early Reviewers program.

The title of The Devil's Hatband refers to a nickname for barbed wire, used widely for ranch fencing but also for the murder of Brenda Mathison, a bright young black woman who has been involved with a radical animal-rights group trying to eradicate the cattle industry in Colorado and Wyoming. Immediately before her death, two men have approached CJ and offered him a generous fee for finding Brenda and some "valuable documents" she has taken. When her murder comes to light, Brenda's father, a judge who is involved with the group who had originally hired CJ, promises him a bonus for finding the killer.

Brenda's group had obtained the formula for a virus that could be used to quickly infect a herd of cattle, and which would also be deadly to humans. CJ has to use all his resources and connections to find out more about the group, learn about the virus, and concoct a plan to foil the group's plans.

We see some of CJ's friends in the Five Points area, including Rosie (short for Roosevelt) the mechanic and Mavis, who works in her father's restaurant and has had an on-and-off relationship with CJ, but has broken it off because he keeps putting himself in danger. These secondary characters add some color to the story and keep it from being overly focused on the main events. We also see some of the other bail bondsmen and learn some interesting tidbits about CJ; for example, he collects vintage rare license plates.

The story moves along in fits and starts, as a case typically might. CJ is beaten and his car is vandalized; he doesn't know if these acts are related to his new case or are the work of villains he has helped put away in the past. Conveniently, he has just the right connections to pursue the details of the case, including a doctor who can analyze the virus and a local who keeps an eye on the property of the radical group. he is also rewarded for his friendship with and support of a couple of homeless men in his neighborhood in Denver. There is a significant plot twist near the end of the book for which we were not at all prepared; it's frustrating to have such a development with no clues leading up to it.

My main complaint about this book is the writing style, which is quite clumsy and awkward in places. Greer makes very brief leaps into the perspective of minor characters, to present a point that could have been made more cleanly without the perspective shift. His word choices are often odd, sometimes apparently in search of variation. He tells us a lot of things that I would have preferred to glean from dialog or actions. His characters and setting are interesting enough to suggest that it will be worthwhile to catch up with him after he has a few more books under his belt. ( )