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.

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.