The Silverville Swindle

Billy Nobel was always looking for The Big One. It was something that always eluded him until the night he ran over UFO expert Earl Bob Jackson while he was relieving himself on the side of a mountain pass in the middle of a snowstorm. Now with a dead body behind him and a newly stolen Cadillac DeVille, Billy finds himself staring "The Big One" right in the eye when he drives into Silverville, a quiet Colorado mountain community with a sagging economy and a UFO scheme to bring the tourist dollars in. First an amusement park and museum, then a celestial motif for the town. Cowboys and embezzlers, tourists and con men, Hells Angels and religious zealots all get caught up in the frenzy, some hoping to make a quick buck, others seeking a spiritual message from beyond the stars. It is the payoff Billy has been waiting for his entire life--if he can just keep up the charade long enough to get his cash and skip town before the locals and cops discover the con. A funny and irreverent novel about the New West and the growing pains that change brings.\n"How far will a mountain town go to get more tourists? Clear to Arcturus, maybe, and along the way to the stars, there are con men, scam artists, hustlers, perhaps even a few honest citizens -- a howling funny ride all the way." Ed Quillen, syndicated columnist for the Denver Post and co-publisher of Colorado Central.