Bounty hunter Leo Guild is on the trail of a wily mountain man wanted for a deadly bank robbery, but he-s not entirely convinced his quarry is the true guilty party....

1965: America’s favorite small-town detective must solve the murder of two old friends against the backdrop of America’s cultural revolution. For small-town Iowa lawyer Sam McCain the year 1965 is not a sweet one. His father is gravely ill. His elitist boss is just now coming out of rehab. The brilliant lawyer he'd hoped to start a relationship with has gone back to her husband in Chicago. And first young soldier from Black River Falls returns home from a strange place called Viet Nam. In a coffin.

Against this background McCain tries to enjoy himself during the long Labor Day weekend party the town sponsors every year, reuniting with several old friends who appeared throughout the first six novels. Now that they're all in their late twenties some of the old grudges and rivalries seem silly—until two of them are murdered for what seems to be a motive buried in the past.

With the Beatles, Rolling Stones, and Bob Dylan irritating those over thirty—and the boys in long hair and girls wearing blouses without bras irritating people even more—Sam McCain is forced to realize that his old world, along with the entire country's, is about to end forever. ....

Death visits the drive-in, in this new mystery featuring America's favorite small-town detective.

Sam McCain is back, with all "the rueful wisdom and charm of an exemplary hero who"—says the San Francisco Chronicle—"is curious not only about whodunit but also about some of the more elusive riddles of human existence." It's 1963, June. All spring Freedom Riders have been advancing the cause of civil rights in the South. While no one's marching in Black River Falls, Iowa, except maybe the high school band, the sleepy heartland town is showing signs of racial unease.

For the body of a black college student—David Leeds—has turned up dead. The evidence points to blackmail, and to a scandal that could ruin the already encumbered campaign of the very white Senator Lloyd Williams for reelection, if photos exist to prove rumors that romantically link the senator's daughter to the handsome, bright, ambitious—and black—David Leeds.

Prejudice runs mean and deep in Sam McCain's hometown, as the amiable young attorney and sometime detective discovers in an investigation that takes him from the unlit backstreets of Black River Falls to the cliquey precincts of the martini-fortified rich....