Publisher's Synopsis
As Black River Falls, Iowa, prepares for a presidential election campaign visit from Vice President Richard Milhous Nixon, Reverend John Muldaur is stirring up the town with both his anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic circulars and his snake-handling ceremonies. When Muldaur drops dead on his altar, however, it's not from a snakebite but from strychnine-laced Pepsi. With only a week before her good friend Tricky Dick comes to town, Judge Esme Whitney enlists her friend the struggling lawyer and occasional investigator Sam McCain to prevent the population of Black River Falls from looking like "a bunch of hillbillies." Once again, McCain must confront local prejudices, secrets, and dim-witted police chief Cliffe Sykes, Jr. to solve another small-town mystery in the acclaimed series launched with The Day the Music Died. Author Ed Gorman is the winner of many awards, including the Shamus, the Spur, and the International Fiction Writer's Award. "....provoke[s] a bracing nostalgia for a time that was neither as innocent nor as dull as is sometimes said."Wall Street Journal "Without overworking those warhorses, nostalgia and kitsch, he sharply evokes the twilight of the '50s...."Los Angeles Times "No writer captures the mood of 50s middle America ... better than Gorman."Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine "Gorman ... seems to have hit a mother lode with this series."Publishers Weekly " ....good and evil clash ... as they have in the more urban crime drama of Block or Leonard."Booklist
