DURING THE SUMMER OF 1936, destitute farmers from the Dust Bowl swarm into California, and an old friend brings police detective Tom Hickey a manuscript, a clue to the mystery of his father Charlie's longago disappearance. Tom chooses to risk losing his job and family to follow this lead. Even his oldest friend and mentor, retired cop Leo Weiss, opposes Tom's decision. Why so passionately? Tom lures the novelist B. Traven to a meeting on Catalina and accuses him of manuscript theft and homicide. Traven replies that the Sundance Kid, having escaped from his reputed death in Bolivia, killed Charlie. Tom crosses the desert to Tucson, tracking the person or ghost of the legendary outlaw. He meets a young Dust Bowl refugee intent on avenging the enslavement of his sister by an L.A. cop on temporary border duty in Yuma. Tom frees the sister, delivers the boy's revenge, and becomes a fugitive, wanted for felony assault by the L.A.P.D., his now-former employer. What he learns in Tucson sends Tom up against powerful newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst. He hopes to enlist Leo, but instead Leo offers evidence that Tom's father was a criminal. For Tom and his sister, both victims of Charlie's wife, their crazy mother, what now? This is the final chapter in the Hickey saga that ranges across the 1900s.

Author Biography

Ken Kuhlken's stories have appeared in Esquire and dozens of other magazines and anthologies, been honorably mentioned in Best American Short Stories, and earned National Endowment for the Arts Writing Fellowship. His novels have been chosen as an Ernest Hemingway Best First Fiction Book, a Private Eye Writers of America Best First Novel, and a Shamus Awards Best Novel. The novels are Midheaven and the Tom Hickey California Crime series: (in historical order) The Biggest Liar in Los Angeles, 1926; The Good Know Nothing, 1936; The Venus Deal, 1942; The Loud Adios, 1943; The Angel Gang, 1950; The Do-Re-Mi, 1971; and The Vagabond Virgins, 1979.