Leaden Skies-Ann Parker

Leaden Skies
Ann Parker
Poisoned Pen, Jul 2009, $24.95
ISBN: 1590585771

In July 1880 as former President Ulysses S. Grant arrives at the mining town Leadville on a five day visit, Colorado, Silver Queen Saloon co-owner Inez Stannert is divorcing her missing husband while having an affair with Reverend Sands. Being an astute businesswoman, Inez conceals her partnership with Madam Frisco Flo in a brothel.

When Lizzie the prostitute is murdered, Inez becomes worried over her investment. Used to fixing problems before they become catastrophic like she is doing with her marital status, Inez investigates the homicide. She quickly learns of another silent partner but not who. She draws the ire of the town’s power brokers from mine owners, to politicians to the reporters. However, that anti-Inez fervor expands when prostitutes and moms become irate with her inquiry. However, the only one she fears alienating is Hatchet the tax collector so as long as she avoids him, she will keep digging.

LEADEN SKIES is a fabulous post Reconstruction Era frontier thriller that brings to life a Colorado mining town at a time when change is occurring with the Union troops having just left the south and women’s suffrage losing momentum yet still being pushed in the Rockies. Inez is terrific as she holds the story line together with her inquiry that alienates the entire town of Leadville who want no skeletons rattled while Grant is there. Although the whodunit takes a back seat to one woman’s struggle to remain economically independent in the late nineteenth century, Ann Parker writes a wonderful Americana tale.

Harriet Klausner