In The Contrary Blues, John Billheimer's acclaimed debut set in West Virginia mining country, transportation expert, amateur sleuth, and erstwhile native son Owen Allison got caught up in a transportation embezzlement scheme chock full of West Virginia good ol' boys just a little bit short on ethics. Owen's next adventure, Highway Robbery, found Owen winging his way home again, this time to investigate a recently discovered thirty-five-year-old skeleton with a bullet hole in its skull. Now, in Dismal Mountain, Owen Allison returns yet again to the familiar hometown hills of West Virginia. Within minutes of his arrival he's embroiled in a battle with cheating hospital administrators and a shady land development company. When construction dumping threatens the family hollow near Barkley, Owen's Aunt Lizzie grabs her rifle and sets out to stop it. Shots are fired, a trucker is killed, and Aunt Lizzie swears she pulled the trigger. But Owen thinks she's hiding something--perhaps out of a stubborn sense of family loyalty--and he intends to find the truth before she's forced to face the consequences. Can Owen clear his aunt's name, in spite of her best efforts to stonewall him, as well as figure out a way to stop the harmful dumping before it's too late for all the Allisons? If anyone can successfully navigate the bureaucratic mess and deal with the colorful local scoundrels, it's Owen Allison. Both are par for the course in John Billheimer's quirky and inventive mystery series.

Dismal Mountain: An Owen Allison Mystery

Literature & Fiction

Billheimer, John

United States

Minotaur Books

Transportation investigator Owen Allison recently left his lucrative consulting practice in California to help his mother back home in West Virginia in her fight against cancer. His ex-wife and current lover, Judith, is also back on the West Coast, and now that his mother has mostly recovered, he's itching to get back to his life, to stimulate both his portfolio and his love life. But before he has a chance to leave his small hometown of Barkley, West Virginia, a local dam breaks, sending a black ribbon of coal sludge cascading miles and miles through the hollows across the region. Four people lose their lives in the accident, and the ambulance chasers gnash their teeth and formulate strategies for the inevitable lawsuits against big coal. It turns out that Owen knows the owner of the coal mine, a good ol' boy from his high school class whose success has surprised everyone, even himself. What's more, the classmate knows that finding out why things fail is Owen's specialty, and he hires him on the spot to figure out just what went wrong. Judith and his California practice will have to wait, but Owen is only half-worried about letting those things slide. He's thrilled to be back in the thick of things, and readers will be, too, in another quirky, engaging installment in John Billheimer's unusual and winning series.

Drybone Hollow: An Owen Allison Mystery

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Mystery

Highway Robbery

When a highway construction crew uncovers human remains, the subsequent investigation has everyone in town on the edge of their seats, including the environmentalists protesting the creation of the roadway and civil engineer Owen Allison, who is determined to solve the mystery. Reprint.

Contemporary

Worldwide Library

Dismal Mountain

Home Fries Transportation expert Owen Allison returns for a family emergency and is plunged into scandal scams and murder down home in West Virginia. His eccentric aunt Lizzie claims to have shot a man in a truck on Dismal Mountain, where developers are ravaging the land. Owen knows his aunt is covering for someone, but whom? As he enlists the help of an old girlfriend, now a nun, the truth about what's really going on beneath the cover of darkness on Dismal Mountain becomes inexorably entwined in the good Sister's apparent suicide. Knowing for certain that it was murder, Owen sets out to find the truth, a twisted conspiracy of big money, deadly schemes and ruthless people who kill to cover their tracks. For them, Owen has become public enemy number one.

Drybone Hollow by John Billheimer released on Jul 23, 2004 is available now for purchase.

Drybone Hollow

WWL Mystery

The Contrary Blues

Not much happens in Contrary, West Virginia--a sleepy town with failing coal mines, a few old moonshine stills, and an urgent need for revenue.  A federal grant for a nonexistent bus system seemed just the ticket . . . if only the government auditor, sent to look things over, hadn't drunk too much white lightning.  And ended up dead.Now his successor, Owen Allison, has come down from D.C. to check out the situation.  Disgruntled with his life inside the Beltway, Owen is willing to give Contrary's officials the benefit of the doubt--and himself some time to romance Mary Beth, the alluring town controller.  He soon feels like seventeen different kinds of fool.  Because something has long been fermenting in Contrary besides corn mash.  Another body has been found.  And Owen may be next . . . unless he uncovers the big secrets hidden in the hearts of a small Appalachian town.

Dell

Most baseball fans know what links Fred Merkle, Fred Snodgrass, Mickey Owen and Bill Buckner. It's a pantheon of public failure. They would be harder put to say what links Eric Byrnes, Tony Fernandez, and Babe Ruth, though these players made misplays every bit as egregious. In this smart, highly readable history of scapegoating, John Billheimer identifies the elements that combine to condemn one player to a life sentence while another gets a wrist slap for the same offense. As it turns out, the difference between a lower-case e in some forgotten box score and a lifetime of ignominy can hinge on a number of factors, including timing, geography, reputation, misunderstanding, media bias, and just plain bad luck.

Baseball and the Blame Game: Scapegoating in the Major Leagues

Sports & Outdoors

Baseball

McFarland

Hitchcock and the Censors (Screen Classics)

Throughout his career, Alfred Hitchcock had to deal with a wide variety of censors attuned to the slightest suggestion of sexual innuendo, undue violence, toilet humor, religious disrespect, and all forms of indecency, real or imagined. From 1934 to 1968, the Motion Picture Production Code Office controlled the content and final cut on all films made and distributed in the United States. Code officials protected sensitive ears from standard four-letter words, as well as a few five-letter words like tramp and six-letter words like cripes. They also scrubbed "excessively lustful" kissing from the screen and ensured that no criminal went unpunished. During their review of Hitchcock's films, the censors demanded an average of 22.5 changes, ranging from the mundane to the mind-boggling, on each of his American films. Code reviewers dictated the ending of Rebecca (1940), absolved Cary Grant of guilt in Suspicion (1941), edited Cole Porter's lyrics in Stage Fright (1950), decided which shades should be drawn in Rear Window (1954), and shortened the shower scene in Psycho (1960). In Hitchcock and the Censors, author John Billheimer traces the forces that led to the Production Code and describes Hitchcock's interactions with code officials on a film-by-film basis as he fought to protect his creations, bargaining with code reviewers and sidestepping censorship to produce a lifetime of memorable films. Despite the often-arbitrary decisions of the code board, Hitchcock still managed to push the boundaries of sex and violence permitted in films by charming―and occasionally tricking―the censors and by swapping off bits ofdialogue, plot points, and individual shots (some of which had been deliberately inserted as trading chips) to protect cherished scenes and images. By examining Hitchcock's priorities in dealing with the censors, this work highlights the director's theories of suspense as well as his magician-like touch when negotiating with code officials.

Humor & Entertainment

Movies

University Press of Kentucky

Throughout his career, Alfred Hitchcock had to contend with a wide variety of censors attuned to the slightest suggestion of sexual innuendo, undue violence, toilet humor, religious disrespect, and all forms of indecency, real or imagined. From 1934 to 1968, the Motion Picture Production Code Office controlled the content and final cut on all films made and distributed in the United States. During their review of Hitchcock's films, the censors demanded an average of 22.5 changes, ranging from the mundane to the mind-boggling, on each of his American films.\nIn his award-winning Hitchcock and the Censors, author John Billheimer traces the forces that led to the Production Code and describes Hitchcock's interactions with code officials on a film-by-film basis as he fought to protect his creations, bargaining with code reviewers and sidestepping censorship to produce a lifetime of memorable films. Despite the often-arbitrary decisions of the code board, Hitchcock still managed to push the boundaries of sex and violence permitted in films by charming―and occasionally tricking―the censors, and by swapping off bits ofdialogue, plot points, and individual shots (some of which had been deliberately inserted as trading chips) to protect cherished scenes and images. By examining Hitchcock's priorities in dealing with the censors, this work highlights the director's theories of suspense as well as his magician-like touch when negotiating with code officials.

When a hotshot minor league outfielder asks his trainer, Dale Loren, for steroids, Loren supplies a harmless mixture of cold cream and lemon juice, telling him it's a brand-new steroid that can't be detected by baseball's drug testing regimen. Believing the mixture gives him an illegal edge, the outfielder goes on a hitting spree and is called up to the majors where, cut off from his supply of "steroids," he falls into a deep slump. Then he tests positive for drugs and names Loren as his supplier. Loren is fired and, shortly afterward, the outfielder is found dead under mysterious circumstances. Local sportswriter Lloyd Keaton --who lost his money, marriage and a major-market career to a gambling addiction --sets out to clear Loren's name. In the process he is threatened by mobsters, shot at, and learns his teenage son is hooked on steroids. Keaton soon discovers that the highest stakes are off the field and he'll risk more than he ever imagined to protect his family and find the truth.

Field of Schemes (A Lloyd Keaton Mystery)

Five Star

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Books by Billheimer, John

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Billheimer, John. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Dismal Mountain: An Owen Allison Mystery

Drybone Hollow: An Owen Allison Mystery

Highway Robbery

Dismal Mountain

Drybone Hollow

The Contrary Blues

Baseball and the Blame Game: Scapegoating in the Major Leagues

Hitchcock and the Censors (Screen Classics)

Hitchcock and the Censors (Screen Classics)

Field of Schemes (A Lloyd Keaton Mystery)