Honky Tonk Samurai by Joe R. Lansdale.

 

So, Lansdale's a fricking legend, and novels like this demonstrate why. On some level it's your basic small-town/rural crime novel, with POV characters who are kinda sorta at least vaguely connected to people with some amount of authority--somewhere between undeputized cops and unlicensed PIs--with grit and crime and vague twists and (because it's a novel in a series) callbacks to previous adventures and new characters arriving. Lansdale's writing though, his turns of phrase and his ear for dialogue, as well as his sense of place and people, elevate what is arguably a pretty formulaic story. Witty and serious in turns, as needed, well-paced, gritty and bloody and sorta hopeful-ish, as much about the tight connections between the major characters as about any other elements.