From Booklist , November 1, 1998

It's 1917, and Goodwin Ryder, a naive young Baltimore street kid, is eager to start his first assignment with a detective agency. He must infiltrate the union run by Frank Little, which is currently crippling copper mines in Butte, Montana. The escalating involvement of the U.S. in World War I and the increasing copper prices are the key reasons the pressure to end the strike is so keen.

Ryder initially sees the issue in black-and-white terms labor is bad, business is good; however, he eventually realizes that he has much more in common with the miners than with the companies for which he works. Unable to free himself from the agency, he becomes an unwitting accomplice in the

lynching death of Little. Author Jackson, best known for his Fang Mulheisen detective series, has taken a little-known historical incident and woven it into a fascinating tapestry of time, place, atmosphere, and character.

Wes Lukowsky