Drybone Hollow: An Owen Allison Mystery - Hardcover

Billheimer, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312291213 ISBN 13: 9780312291211

Publisher: Minotaur Books, 2003

Synopsis

Transportation investigator Owen Allison recently left his lucrative consulting practice in California to help his mother back home in West Virginia in her fight against cancer. His ex-wife and current lover, Judith, is also back on the West Coast, and now that his mother has mostly recovered, he's itching to get back to his life, to stimulate both his portfolio and his love life.

But before he has a chance to leave his small hometown of Barkley, West Virginia, a local dam breaks, sending a black ribbon of coal sludge cascading miles and miles through the hollows across the region. Four people lose their lives in the accident, and the ambulance chasers gnash their teeth and formulate strategies for the inevitable lawsuits against big coal.

It turns out that Owen knows the owner of the coal mine, a good ol' boy from his high school class whose success has surprised everyone, even himself. What's more, the classmate knows that finding out why things fail is Owen's specialty, and he hires him on the spot to figure out just what went wrong. Judith and his California practice will have to wait, but Owen is only half-worried about letting those things slide. He's thrilled to be back in the thick of things, and readers will be, too, in another quirky, engaging installment in John Billheimer's unusual and winning series.

About this title

About the Author:

John Billheimer, a native of West Virginia, lives in Portola Valley, California. This is his fourth Owen Allison novel.

From Publishers Weekly:

Scamps and scalawags abound in Billheimer's fourth Owen Allison mystery (after 2001's Dismal Mountain), in which the transportation inspector returns to his native Barkley, W.Va., to help his ailing mother. When an impoundment dam atop the Canaan II coal mine bursts and sends a flood of coal slurry washing through nearby Drybone Hollow, wiping out a bridge, two trailers and a few unfortunate people, Owen finds his expertise as a "failure analyst" in great demand. The dam's collapse loosed not only the coal slurry but a horde of scam artists. While some of the scams are of the almost blameless sort, such as government fraud, others are more serious, such as defrauding the government. The author adroitly catches the phrases and speech patterns of oddball characters like the Reverend Moral Brody, who rides a Harley and wears a black leather jacket emblazoned with "HEAVEN'S ANGELS." A peaceable and decent sort, Owen is fond of the locals, but has a healthy appreciation of their deceitful ways. He needs all his patience and skill to untangle the deadly threats from the merely mendacious as kidnapping, kickbacks, blackmail, fraud and murder once again flow through coal country. Billheimer's West Virginia is unlikely to please the state's tourism bureau, but it's a fine place for readers to visit for humor and homicide.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Minotaur Books
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0312291213
• ISBN 13: 9780312291211
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320