Cannibal Plateau: A Novel - Hardcover

Joe Wise

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0865342628 ISBN 13: 9780865342620

Publisher: Sunstone Press, 1997

Synopsis

On a spring day in 1874, a reporter for Harper's Weekly traveling with a surveying party on a wilderness road through a remote mountain valley in Colorado's San Juan mountains, wandered onto an abandoned campsite where he found the mutilated and rotting bodies of five men. Immediately a search began for Alfred Hammit (Packer), a hapless drifter and the sole survivor of the ill-fated prospecting expedition, suspected of murdering the five men and living off their bodies during the severe winter weather that had trapped them. Fascinated by the compelling details of this 120-year-old case, David Walton and his friend Jack Fuller team up to reinvestigate the mysterious events surrounding the prospectors' deaths and the two trials that led to Hammit's conviction. Before the end of what at first seems like an academic exercise, Walton and Fuller find themselves digging up graves, trailing a suspected drug dealer through the mountains and dealing with the murder of a local mine operator. Library Booknotes called it a 'fascinating historical thriller.' Tony Hillerman said: 'People who love good writing are going to love Cannibal Plateau. Joe Wise is an artist with words-every sentence clear and true. A Winner!' The Albuquerque Journal reported: 'Wise does a splendid job of describing the beautiful scenery of the region, and the protagonists' investigation into the old murders is, at times, riveting.' Bookman News calls it a 'fascinating historical thriller.' And there's even been a movie and a musical (one of its creators is Trey Parker of BLAME CANADA fame) about the subject. Joe Wise's book gives another whole side to the subject!

About this title

About the Author:

Joe Wise, a physician and freelance writer, was born in Texas and has traveled extensively in the Rocky Mountain West. He has written for the Travel Section of The New York Times and The Santa Fe New Mexican, Sunset, Relax, Reminisce and New Mexico magazines, The Journal of the West and The Journal of Military History of Texas and the Southwest. His second novel, In the Moro, is based on John Fremont's disastrous mountain expedition of 1849. He currently lives with his wife in Santa Fe where he is working on his third novel, The Fish, which deals with a penitentiary doctor drawn unwittingly into the 'in house' drug trade.

Review:

''People who love good writing are going to love Cannibal Plateau. Joe Wise is an artist with words - every sentence clear and true. A winner.'' --Tony Hillerman

''Wise does a splendid job of describing the beautiful scenery of the region, and the protagonists' investigation into the murders is, at times, riveting.'' --Albuquerque Journal

''On a spring day in 1874, a reporter for Harper's Weekly traveling with a surveying party on a wilderness road through a remote mountain valley in Colorado's San Juan mountains, wandered onto an abandoned campsite where he found the mutilated and rotting bodies of five men. Immediately a search began for Alfred Hammit, a hapless drifter and the sole survivor of the ill-fated prospecting expedition, suspected of murdering the five men and living off their bodies during the severe winter that had trapped them. Fascinated by the compelling details of this 120-year-old case, David Walton and his friend Jack Fuller team up to reinvestigate the mysterious events surrounding the prospectors' deaths and the two trials that led to Hammit's conviction. Before the end of what at first seems like an academic exercise, Walton and Fuller find themselves digging up graves, trailing a suspected drug dealer through the mountains and dealing with the murder of a local mine operator. Cannibal Plateau is one of those gripping novels so easy to pick up and so difficult to put down.'' --Reviewer's Bookwatch

About this edition

• Publisher: Sunstone Press
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0865342628
• ISBN 13: 9780865342620
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 157