Leaden Skies

March 30, 2009
The July 1880 visit of former president Ulysses S. Grant to the mining community of Leadville, Colo., sparks Parker's third mystery (after 2006's Iron Ties
), a twisty tale of murder and ambition. Saloon co-owner Inez Stannert is preoccupied with divorcing her missing husband, her affair with the local minister and her secret business partnership with the local madam when one of the madam's prostitutes is first attacked and later killed. Eager to protect her investment, Inez begins to look into the case, confronting mine owners with personal agendas; local politicians; zealous journalists; a mapmaker with a past; a determined mother with aspirations for her wastrel son; a prostitute with family obligations and hopes for a better life; and a ruthless city tax collector, appropriately nicknamed the Hatchet. Parker is proficient in showing the crossroads between civilization and the frontier, including emerging new roles for women. A cliffhanger ending sets a promising stage for the next installment.

May 15, 2009
Saloonkeeper Inez Stannert sorts out trouble at the cathouse in her third Western adventure (Iron Ties, 2006, etc.).

The mining town of Leadville, Colo., is excited nearly to the point of riots by a visit from former President Ulysses S. Grant. While the jostling crowd waits for Grant's train to arrive, fire breaks out at Frisco Flo's bawdy house, threatening Inez's Silver Queen saloon next door. As the townsfolk race to put out the flames, Lizzie, one of the whores, tears off into the night. In the next morning's ashes, Lizzie turns up dead. Inez has a particular interest in finding the killer and arsonist. She and Flo, as fellow businesswomen, have made a deal to buy a new brothel for Flo's girls. President Grant's visit has brought all kinds of suspicious characters to Leadville: Cecil Farnesworth, a mousy surveyor; Serena Clatchworthy, an eccentric suffragette in purple bloomers with a nose for juicy journalism; and John Quincy Adams Wesley, a mustachioed villain in a black top hat who intends to spend his way to political power. In the course of her investigation, Inez copes with her divorce, attends a ball, courts the reverend, plays high-stakes poker, averts a duel, discovers who really killed Lizzie and sets the wrongly accused prostitute, who happens to have a heart of gold, on her way to a new life.

Disjointed and clichd.

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