 |
|
 |
|
£6.99
Buy this now
Synopsis
Extract |
 |
|
April 1950: The rusting hulk of a steam locomotive rises from the deep waters of a Montana lake. Inside is all that remains of three men who died forty-four years before. But it is not the engine nor its grisly contents that interest the people watching nearby. It is what is about to come next…
1906: For two years, the western states of America have been suffering an extraordinary crime spree: a string of bank robberies by a single man who then cold-bloodedly murders any and all witnesses, and then vanishes without a trace. Fed up by the depredations of "The Butcher Bandit," the U.S. government brings in the best man they can find - a tall, lean, no-nonsense detective named Isaac Bell who has caught thieves and killers from coast to coast.
But he has never had a challenge like this one. From Arizona to Colorado to the streets of San Francisco during its calamitous earthquake and fire, he pursues what is quickly becoming clear to him is the best criminal mind he has ever encountered, and the woman who seems to hold the key to the man's identity. Using science, deduction and intuition, he repeatedly draws near, only to grasp at empty air, but at least he knows his pursuit is having an effect. Because his quarry is getting angry now, and has turned the chase back on him. The hunter has become the hunted. And soon, it will take all of Bell's skills not merely to prevail… but to survive.
Filled with intricate plotting, his signature dazzling set pieces, and not one, but two, extraordinary villains, this is the master working at the height of his powers. |
|
April 15, 1950
Flathead Lake, Montana
It rose from the depths like an evil monster in a Mesozoic sea. A coat of green slime covered the cab and boiler while gray-brown silt from the lake bottom slid and fell off the eighty-one-inch drive wheels and splashed into the cold waters of the lake. Ascending slowly above the surface, the old steam locomotive hung for a moment from the cables of a huge crane mounted on a wooden barge. Still visible under the dripping muck, beneath the open side window of its cab, was the number 3025.
Built by the Baldwin Locomotive Works of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 3025 rolled out of the factory on April 10th of 1904. The 'Pacific' class was a common large-sized, high-drive-wheeled steam engine that could pull ten steel passenger cars long distances at speeds up to ninety miles an hour. She was known as a 4-6-2 because of her four-wheeled truck in the front, just behind the cowcatcher, the six massive drive wheels below the boiler, and the two small wheels mounted beneath the cab.
The crew on the barge watched in awe as the crane operator orchestrated his levers and gently lowered old 3025 onto the main deck, its weight settling the barge three inches deeper in the water. She sat there almost a minute before the six men overcame their wonderment and detached the cables.
'She's in remarkably good shape for sitting underwater for almost fifty years,' murmured the salvage superintendent of the battered old barge that was nearly as ancient as the locomotive. Since the nineteen twenties, it had been used for dredging operations on the lake and surrounding tributaries.
Bob Kaufman was a big, friendly man, ready with a laugh at the slightest hint of something jovial. With a face ruddy from long hours spend in the sun, he had been working on the barge for twenty-seven years. Now seventy-five, he could have retired long ago, but as long as the dredging company kept him on he was going to keep working. Sitting at home and working jigsaw puzzles was not his idea of the good life. He studied the man standing beside him, who was, as close as he could figure, slightly older.
'What do you think?' Kaufman asked… |
|
|
|
