The Freshour Cylinders

WINNER OF THE 1999 AMERICAN BOOK AWARD

Tom Freshour needs a vacation. It's the dusty, hot summer of 1934, and he'd like to escape both the heat in western Arkansas and his cases at the county prosecutor's office for the calm and solitude of a fishing trip. But his old Ford won't start, and while it's being repaired, an eccentric and enigmatic collector of Indian artifacts is brutally murdered.

It doesn't help matters that the executor of the collector's estate is Rainy Davis, a beautiful, intelligent young archaeologist who's uncertain why she was appointed to oversee the estate of a man whom she'd met only once.

Nor does it help that the most formidable county judge has asked personally that Freshour take the case.

But Freshour agrees, drawing himself into a tense and violent investigation of murder, political scandal, and some very private affairs.

In this suspenseful literary mystery, Speer Morgan takes us back to the events surrounding the discovery and destruction of the Spiro Mound, the most significant pre-Columbian temple mound ever found in North America. Weaving history with the compelling story of murder, broken hearts, and greed, Morgan gives us one of the most engrossing, sexy, and suspenseful reads of the year.