The eagerly awaited third novel in Patrick F. McManus's bestselling mystery series finds Sheriff Bo Tully with his hands full of elusive killers, eccentric backwoods characters, and irresistible women in this latest romp through the wilds of Blight County, Idaho.
Sheriff Bo Tully is the kind of western lawman who's as good with the ladies as he is with his guns, and he never lets a death threat get in the way of a good barbecue. He's a man with a sense of humor, which comes in handy when trying to establish order in Blight County.
In this latest tale, Tully pursues a seventy-five-year-old missing persons case in which a pair of gold miners (a two-man drilling team known as a double-jack) mysteriously disappeared just as they hit the mother lode in a remote part of Blight County. Meanwhile, a second, more threatening case looms large. After serving only two months of a life sentence, a mentally unstable murderer named Kincaid — a nasty piece of work if there ever was one — manages to escape prison, setting his sights on killing the man who put him behind bars: one Sheriff Bo Tully. In an effort to lead his would-be killer into the open, and also to do a little gold prospecting and fishing while he's at it., Tully heads north with his ex-sheriff father, Pap, and his friend and expert tracker, Dave.
As the two cases play themselves out, Sheriff Tully finds himself hunting down one murderer who's probably long dead, and being hunted by another who's very much alive. A fast-moving tale of murder, mayhem, and mining, The Double-Jack Murders is Patrick F. McManus's darkest, most entertaining mystery yet.
Side Note From Pat:
Back in my twenties, I took up gold prospecting. Once my partner and I were exploring a remote canyon in our search for “color,” when we came upon a tiny opening in a cliff. It turned out to be a small mine. Naturally, we decided to explore it. The mine had been abandoned many years before, but at the end of the tunnel, we discovered a set of drilling steels lined up neatly against the end of the mine. It was apparent that the miners had intended to return.
Something had happened to them. I have always wondered what that could have been. My partner, who may or may not have known about such mining terms, referred to the steels as a “single jack.” When I decided to write a novel based on the little mine, I came across “double jack,” and decided to use that in the novel because, in the novel, the protagonist finds the remains of the two murdered miners. A friend of mine suggested “The Double-Jack Murders” as the title.
— Patrick F. McManus
Los Angeles Times
"What a treat to come across a Patrick McManus tale."
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
"The funniest writer around today."
Kirkus Reviews
(Starred Review)
"One of the most entertaining mystery debuts in years."