Detective Beth McDade worked for the Los Angeles Police Department until she lost her badge for having sex with a junior officer. Beth is now with the sheriff's department in Barstow, California, a desert town where 'nobody wants to be.'
In the 1800s, Barstow was a busy railroad hub for silver mining operations, but is now just a hot desert burg near a military base and a tourist attraction called the 'Calico Ghost Town' - a re-creation of the original town of Calico, with 'residents' and 'shopkeepers' dressed in period costumes.
As the story opens Beth is called to the scene of a late night accident near Peggy Sue's diner, a 50s-style eatery that looks like a giant jukebox surrounded by dinosaurs.
Beth is told that an old man was killed by a motor home.
When Beth looks at CCTV footage of the incident, she observes the sky crackling with electricity, a loud blast, and a bright flash from the nearby Marine base. Then a terrified, disheveled old coot runs out of the darkness into the road, where he's mowed down by a trailer home that has no chance to avoid him.
When coroner Amanda Selby examines the old man's body, she tells Beth that the victim, who has no identification, is filthy; has only a few, badly decayed teeth; is infested with lice; is suffering from advanced syphilis; is wearing clothes manufactured in the 1880s; and has old coins in his pocket. Beth is bewildered, but thinks the victim was probably a kind of eccentric mountain man living off the earth.
A few days later, a Los Angeles police officer consults Beth about a missing person. It seems a Los Angeles chef named Owen Slader, who was driving back to LA from Las Vegas, vanished in the desert. The last ping from Slader's Mercedes SUV occurred around Barstow, and Beth determines that Slader went missing on the same day, at the same time, and in the same area that the dirty old mountain man ran into the road.
Shortly afterwards, a construction crew that's just starting work in the desert near Barstow comes across a buried old coffin containing a dry yellow skeleton that's over a hundred years old. And -WAIT FOR IT - the skeleton is identified as Owen Slader, who disappeared just a few days ago.
From here the story alternates back and forth between the old mining town of Calico in the 1880s.....
.....and current times in Barstow, where Beth is investigating the disappearance of Owen Slader.
Beth's inquiries put her on the radar of Bill Knox, the Security Chief at the nearby Marine base, who warns her off. Nevertheless, Beth plows on with her investigation, aided by the coroner Amanda.
In 1880s Calico, we see that the town is in the midst of a silver rush. It has one newspaper man and one judge, and harbors saloons, restaurants, prostitutes, bath houses, etc. that cater to the miners.
Calico is dirty and stinks to high heaven, with red dust everywhere, and human waste and garbage covering the streets and swept into open ravines. The descriptions of old Barstow/Calico are very vivid and I could picture the filth; the overpowering stench; the exhausted miners with bad breath and unwashed clothes; the meals of steak, beans, biscuits, and boiled potatoes (25 cents); the bath houses where the same water is used again and again; the cramped caves where miners sleep; and so on.
There's a side plot about Beth's investigation of the robbery of a house on the outskirts of Barstow, that the out-of-town owner sees on CCTV from his home in La Jolla. Beth shows up as the culprits are getting away, after one robber flips a middle finger at the security camera and pees on a sofa. Beth gets on the trail of these perps, who've hit several homes in the area.
There are plenty of twists and surprises in the book, which is a mixed-genre thriller.
I was a little put off by Beth's obsession with sex (she picks up men and has sex with them to deal with her boredom and anxiety), a plot device I call 'male fantasy writing.' That aside, this is an excellent story, highly recommended.
Thanks to Netgalley, Lee Goldberg, and Severn House for a copy of the manuscript.
Rating: 4 stars
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