Back Road to Murder

A great read. Back Road To Murder is one of those rare, well written, hard to put down mysteries that are punctuated by flashes of insight and stimulating social massage. Nestled among the glass skyscrapers in downtown Portland, Oregon, is Pierres 5-Star Restaurant. There, on Tuesdays, a cabal of wealthy old-boys met to parade their show-and-dont-tell young women. Inside Pierres, for those few hours every Tuesday, the elegant restaurant becomes 1920s-POSH. William Bartlet, Esq., head of a prestigious Portland law firm and Senior old boy, is blackmailed. An escalating damage control follows with the skillful set-up of redheaded Leyland Sowers, a small town logger, for the murder of Bartlets mistress. Detective Martin Red Goodloe believes the overwhelming evidence against Sowers is too convenient. As Goodloeexotic latte in handdoes the legwork to find the real killer, he gives an insiders tour of Portland and Sultan, the isolated and quirky hometown where Sowers has lived his whole life. Candid glimpses of big-city-Portland and small-town-Sultan reveal parallel abuse of power, exploitation of women, and, most terrible of all, the reason the Sheriffs daughter can only trust redheaded men.