"Strong mid-nineteenth century western thriller"

Leadville, Colorado is booming in 1879 as people arrive hoping to get rich by finding the silver mother lode. Inez Stennert is becoming rich as the owner of the Silver Queen Saloon but her personal life is very unsettled because her wandering man walked out one day and never came back. Inez doesn't know if her husband is alive or dead; she waits for him while her sister raises her sickly son back east.

Fights and brawls are frequent occurrences but everyone is shocked when upright family man Joe Rose is found murdered behind Inez's saloon. Inez starts investigating the assayer's homicide because his widow and son are very dear to her and she would like to be one to bring his killer to justice. She learns that Joe was not as law abiding as she believed and her questions are making some people very uneasy, individuals who will not hesitate to kill her if she gets too close to the truth.

Ann Parker captures the ambiance of a mid-nineteenth century western boomtown so colorfully that readers will imagine they are there. The heroine is an independent woman who lives by her own rules at a time when females were expected to stay in their place. Inez is bossy and stubborn but she is also the kind of person one wants to have in your corner when life turns rough. Let's hope there are more stories starring this one of a kind protagonist.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted August 10, 2003

Summary

As 1879 draws to a close, this Rocky Mountain boomtown has infected the world with silver fever. It's not much different than the dot-com mania or the corporate scams that heat up over a century later. Unfortunately for Joe Rose, a precious-metals assayer, death stakes its own claim. Joe's body is found trampled into the muck behind Inez Stannert's saloon. Inez already had much more to deal with than pouring shots of Taos Lightning and cleaning up a corpse. A lady educated on the East Coast, she has a past that doesn't bear close scrutiny, including her elopement with a gambling man who has recently disappeared. Most townsfolk, including Inez's business partner, Abe Jackson, dismiss Joe's death as an accident. Death, after all, is no stranger in Leadville. But Inez wonders: Why was this loving husband and father carrying a brass token good for "one free screw" at the exclusive parlor house of Denver madam Mattie Silks? When Joe's widow Emma asks Inez to settle Joe's affairs, almost against her will, Inez uncovers skewed assays, bogus greenbacks, and blackmail. Lies and secrets run deep in Colorado, secrets more likely to lead to a hanging than to today's congressional hearings or country-club prisons for the crooked and the greedy. Then again, maybe Joe's murder was purely personal....