Blood on the Crossties: The Florida Chautauqua Murders (A Choctaw Parker Mystery/Adventure)
The audacious theft from a railroad baggage car, with lives lost, of a shipment of 100 new Springfield U.S. Army rifles, along with a substantial amount of payroll money, presents railway magnet William Chipley with a potential business-ending conundrum. In some desperation, he hires experienced but troubled detective Jimmy Lee Parker (nicknamed “Choctaw”) to track down the perpetrators and, hopefully, recover both the money and the rifles, thus restoring his professional and personal reputations.
The landscape muddies as “half-breed” Parker finds himself immersed with a cohort of Pinkerton Detectives hired to recover the payroll and a bigoted, shortsighted Army captain tasked with rifle recovery. This mix of tangled loyalties and divergent objectives complicates Parker’s investigations, which are mired in the prejudices of 1885 America.
Colorful post-Civil War characters coupled with an emerging Victorian era society and underlying motives offer the reader an intriguing narrative landscape. A female gambling “sidekick” aids Parker in surprising ways as lead after potential lead appears to dead-end. Further, the at-odds machinations of both the Pinkerton detectives and Army captain hinder and deflect rather than help.
Brewer crafts an interesting cast of many memorable, despicable, and even some semi- honorable characters within a realistic historical setting. At times graphic and even rough as that society dictated, this overall narrative offers the discerning reader an engaging, anchored crime tale.
