The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 23 December 2004
by Ann Parker
It is early December of 1879, and Leadville, Colorado is a bustling silver mining town, full of busy saloons and brothels, big-time rich mining tycoons, small-time criminals, and just about every opportunistic character in between. The city (which sits at 10,000 feet and is today the highest large city in America) hasn't quite reached the modern age. The railroad hasn't arrived just yet, and some of its wild-west aspects continue to plague its planked sidewalks. People turn up dead all the time, and the town's relatively new marshall takes a pretty casual view of the whole thing. But when a man turns up pretty well trampled at the back door of Inez Stannert's saloon, she takes an interest in solving his killing.
Inez is the spirited keeper of her saloon on an infamous street of saloons and houses of ill repute. She and her partner, Abe Jackson, are still fairly honorable people, despite a colorful past that also includes Inez's missing husband Mark. The book is peopled with the many characters of Leadville, from a shady new preacher, Reverand Sands, to brothel madam Cat DuBois, to Useless (or Ulysses) working the store room of the bar, to Harry Gallagher, the rich owner of one of the town's biggest mines. Each one of them is neck deep in their own shady history, and many of them intertwine with intrigues and criminal behavior. To say more would be to reveal much of the intricate storyline of this book. What makes this book is Parker's accute and entertaining attention to the historical details of the time and the place. It reads like a more-or-less conventionally constructed mystery, but its setting sets it apart from so many less engrossing books. It is both an historical novel and a mystery novel. Its protagonist reminds one of Sue Grafton's Kinsey Milhone. Its setting reminds one of Mark Twain in Virginia City. While some of the plot seems to go astray during the last third of the book, losing a little of the character so strongly built in the first two thirds, the book itself remains strong. A few unanswered questions leave a feeling of intrigue and personality to this unusual and entertaining book. Recommended.
Also by Ann Parker: [Iron Ties]