Four novels in four years? Yes, Eli Cranor has another book coming out in 2025

Credit: Heath Whorton

Following the incredible run of “Don’t Know Tough” in 2022, “Ozark Dogs” in 2023, and “Broiler” in 2024 (plus an eclipse-themed brief story for the Arkansas Times), Pope County writer Eli Cranor will turn his three-peat into a four-peat with “Mississippi Blue 42,” his fourth novel in four years. The book is set to release Aug. 5 via Soho Crime and is available for pre-order here. 

A summary from the publisher:

Former quarterback turned Edgar-winning author Eli Cranor throws a glorious Hail Mary in this series debut starring a rookie FBI agent who finds herself caught in the tangled web of a college football empire and the bloody greed that fuels it.

Special Agent Rae Johnson grew up on football fields alongside her father, a national-championship-winning coach. Which is exactly why, fresh out of Quantico, she is sent down to Compson, Mississippi, to investigate the illicit money flowing into a bustling football program in the heart of the Delta. But two days into the assignment, things take a dire turn when UCM’s star quarterback is flung off a college bar’s roof, lands on a bag of money, and dies.

Hoping to turn a routine fraud case into a career-defining bust, Rae ingratiates herself with the fans, coaches, players, and politicians who make up the university’s intricate social hierarchy. With rumors of corruption rustling through the kudzu vines, Rae soon realizes there’s more to the game than what she’d learned as a child. And in order to win, she’ll have to put all her father’s lessons to the ultimate test.  

Mississippi Blue 42, a well-researched, throwback crime novel in the vein of Carl Hiaasen and Sue Grafton, takes a strenuous and oftentimes hilarious look at the big-money world of college athletics. In Cranor’s capable hands, football isn’t just a game, it’s a front-row seat to the great American show.

You might notice that this is Cranor’s first book set outside of Arkansas. 

“I was born in eastern Arkansas, right along the Mississippi border,” he said in his newsletter. “Moving away from the hills and into the Delta was so much fun. Also, MB42’s protagonist is from Arkansas, so there’s still plenty of Natural State in the book.”

To read the first chapter of “Mississippi Blue 42,” head over to CrimeReads.