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Ed Gorman

In 1950s Iowa, a murder-suicide forces a lawyer to put aside his rock-and-roll grief. 

Sam McCain loves Buddy Holly because he's the only rock-and-roll star who still seems like a dweeb, and Sam knows how that feels. With the unrequited love of his life at his side, Sam drives more than three hours through the snow to watch his idol play the Surf Ballroom. That night, Buddy Holly dies in the most famous plane crash in music history, but Sam has no time to grieve. Because there are too many lawyers in this small town, Sam makes a living as a PI, doing odd jobs for an eccentric judge -- whose nephew, it seems, has a problem only a detective could solve. His trophy wife has been murdered, and as soon as Sam arrives, the nephew kills himself, too. 

The police see this as a clear-cut murder-suicide, but Sam wants to know more, diving into a mystery that will get dangerous faster than you can say 'bye-bye, Miss American Pie.'

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The Sam McCain Mysteries

The Day the Music Died

In the thick of the Cold War, McCain investigates death threats against an alleged red. 

The citizens of Black River Falls are polite, understanding, and respectful -- except when it comes to communism. Joe McCarthy has been dead for two years, but men like Richard Conners are still fighting to clear themselves of his accusations. A liberal who served faithfully under Roosevelt and Truman, only to be slandered as a red during McCarthy's witch hunts, Conners has begun getting death threats written in blood. He hires private investigator Sam McCain to protect him, but no sooner has Sam taken the case than Conners turns up dead. 

The local sheriff gives McCain twenty-four hours to find his client's killer. Although the obvious suspect is one of the local red haters, McCain isn't positive that politics is the motive. In Black River Falls, murder is never cut and dried.

Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?

At a car dealership's big opening day, the festivities are marred by the discovery of a corpse. 

It is September 1957, and America is waiting to meet the Edsel, Ford's top-secret new automobile, whose promotional campaign has redefined the word hype. Sam McCain, lawyer, detective, and car fiend, has been dreaming of the Edsel for months. But when the sheet comes off Ford's new creation, the car is a nightmare. Pastel colored, bulky, and with a distinctively ugly grill, the Edsel draws snickers instead of applause. But in case the dealership owner's day isn't going badly enough, one of the cars has a last surprise in store: a body in the trunk. 

She is the beautiful young wife of the district attorney, and Sam knows she deserved better than to end up dead in an ugly car. As the local police bungle the investigation, Sam quietly digs into the death -- and finds a secret in his city that could be even more disastrous than the Edsel.

Wake Up Little Susie

With the nation's eye on Black River Falls, McCain chases a snake handler's killer. 

Fundamentalist preacher John Muldaur isn't afraid of snakes -- he uses them every week in his services -- but he's convinced that the Pope is trying to kill him. Iowa lawyer Sam McCain, the poorest attorney in a thriving town, listens patiently to the self-declared reverend's outlandish theories about being targeted by a papal hit squad, and agrees to investigate the matter simply to get Muldaur out of his office. But that night at a wild religious service, McCain sees Muldaur proven right. The holy man is killed by poison -- not from one of his rattlesnakes, but from a Pepsi bottle laced with strychnine. 

On the campaign trail for president, Vice President Nixon is on his way to town to make a speech, and McCain is asked to find Muldaur's killer before the national media arrives. What he finds is a conspiracy just as improbable as the Catholic hit men -- but far more deadly.

Save the Last Dance for Me

There is a body in a gazebo, and the chief suspect is not long for this world. 

Small-town lawyer and private detective Sam McCain is enjoying a cocktail party, dancing with a lovelier specimen than his five-foot-five-inch frame usually attracts, when the hostess confronts him with a problem the likes of which Good Housekeeping has never seen. There is a corpse in the backyard gazebo, and the party is definitely over. 

The murdered girl was the twenty-year-old daughter of the town's Cadillac dealer, a troubled young woman with a self-destructive streak. The police focus their investigation on her drag-racing boyfriend, local bad boy David Egan, whom McCain agrees to defend. When Egan dies in a freak car accident, the case seems closed. But examining the hot rod shows a cut brake line -- and a motive for a killing far more complicated than good girl gone bad.

Everybody's Somebody's Fool

At the height of the Cold War, a dead woman turns up in a bomb shelter. 

Black River Falls used to be a boring small town, but at the pinnacle of the Cuban Missile Crisis, nowhere in America can be boring anymore. As the country awaits nuclear annihilation, Iowa gubernatorial favorite Ross Murdoch has a crisis of his own: There is a dead woman in his bomb shelter. 

Murdoch tells his lawyer, Sam McCain, that the corpse was planted there by his enemies in the local police force, and begs McCain to clear his name before Election Day. The dead woman was mistress to four of the town's most powerful men -- any of whom might have wanted her dead. As the nation's nuclear paranoia reaches a fever pitch, McCain searches for a killer and learns that there are certain kinds of disaster for which even the finest bomb shelter is no match.

Breaking Up Is Hard to Do

On the eve of the March on Washington, racial tensions flare in McCain's small town. 

In the summer of 1963, freedom riders are crisscrossing the South, Martin Luther King is preparing for a march on Washington, and the people of Black River Falls, Iowa, are about to go to the polls. Senator Williams is cruising to reelection when a blackmailer starts sending him photos of his daughter arm in arm with a handsome black student. To save his campaign, Williams hires private investigator Sam McCain to talk sense into the crook, but the blackmailer is nowhere to be found -- until McCain discovers him behind his shack, dead in the dirt, with a handsome black corpse beside him. 

TV crews arrive with the police, to broadcast the horrible scene across the state. As Black River Falls threatens to erupt into all-out race war, Iowa will have much more to worry about than Election Day. Searching for the savage killer, McCain learns that quiet prejudice can be the most dangerous kind of all.

The Sam McCain Mysteries - The book series

The Sam McCain Mysteries - The book series

The Sam McCain Mysteries books in order

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