Crooks wore badges in Longview, Texas in 1972. In
Blue, Illicit and Unspoken
, a novel by Faith Chatham, Sheriff Wade Wallace is adept at exploiting peoples' emotional and economic vulnerabilities to draw them into the vortex of the multi-million dollar crime syndicate he operates out of the Court House (similar to one operated by Gregg County Sheriff Tom Welch in the late 1970s). People hear of, but prefer not to know about, the illicit activities of their local elected officials.
Faith Chatham creates fictitious characters to tell the story of how people in a small city are shaken when a popular sheriff's deputy, Sonny Williams, dies in the County Crime Lab, from ,what may or may not be , a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The characters and events in the book are fiction, however the author's description of the funeral and death of Sonny Williams, mirrors that of the death of Sheriff Tom Welch's Public Information Director, Deputy Wayne Gill, in the late 1970s. The author dedicates the novel to Wayne Gill.
This is a novel about how individuals respond when confronted with information, rumors, or suspicion. It's about how some work meticulously to distinguish innuendo from fact, and to move beyond hearsay, to the evidence which can be used in court. It's about how frightened people hide from what they see, hear, and know. It's about how people seek out friends whom they trust when things are murky and uncertain, and local elected officials and law enforcement cannot be trusted.
It is the story of people getting caught in webs others spin. It is the story about how those who care for them, work to help keep them alive and to free them. It is a story about how a teenage boy's obsession with his prized vintage motorcycle places him in the crosshair of a deadly dangerous corrupt Sheriff's department. The novel is set against a backdrop of crime and public corruption, similar to that which led to the 1979 conviction of the Gregg County Sheriff Tom Welch, a County Commission, a Justice of the Peace and two deputies, for public corruption and conspiracy to commit murder.