Two murders shock a Rocky Mountain ranch town in this captivating suspense novel from one of Montana’s greatest storytellers
In the two years since his last adventure with Sheriff Chick Charleston, Jason Beard has been away at college, preparing to enter the “real world” when he graduates. When he returns to his hometown of Midbury, Montana, for the summer, he expects to see big changes—but finds instead the same old peculiar place, its eccentric citizens up to familiar tricks.
One of those crusty characters is F. Y. Grimsley, a prominent rancher with a nasty mean streak. The day after Grimsley accuses the residents of a nearby Indian reservation of rustling his cattle, he turns up dead, struck on the head by an object that leaves distinctive marks. Sheriff Charleston deputizes Jase, and the two pay a visit to Eagle Charlie in search of answers. Soon after the interview, Eagle Charlie turns up murdered with what appears to be the same weapon that felled Grimsley.
With a potential serial killer on the loose, the sheriff and Jase are anxious to find the culprit before another body is discovered. Their investigation uncovers many dark and unexpected secrets of Midbury, but the crucial clue just might be as plain as day—if they only knew where to look.
A. B. Guthrie Jr. (1901–1991) was an award-winning American novelist, screenwriter, historian, and environmentalist. Born in Indiana, he was six months old when his father brought the family west to the Montana territory. Guthrie graduated from the University of Montana with a degree in journalism and worked as a reporter and editor for two decades before receiving a Nieman fellowship from Harvard University. During his grant year, he began to seriously pursue his interest in writing fiction. His first major novel, The Big Sky (1947), was followed by the Pulitzer Prize–winning The Way West (1949). Guthrie’s popular mystery series featuring Montana sheriff Chick Charleston earned a Silver Spur Award from the Western Writers of America and an award from the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. The five books in the series are Wild Pitch (1973), The Genuine Article (1977), No Second Wind (1980), Playing Catch-Up (1985), and Murder in the Cotswolds (1989). In 1954 Guthrie’s screenplay for the film Shane was nominated for an Academy Award.