This is a Western mystery story about murder and grief and conspiracy and the dogged determination of two old friends to catch the people who have committed many terrible crimes against them. It takes the reader from a small western town through the great cities of Kansas City and St. Louis of the 1880s to a romantic but tension-filled voyage down the Mississippi during the heyday of the great Mississippi River paddlewheel steamers. In New Orleans, the mood is one of danger and grim pursuit, as the protagonists wend their way through a tangled web of intrigue and death set against the...

In the year 1778, Lieutenant Kenneth Hamilton, wrongfully court-martialed by the American Continental Navy, leaves the Navy to seek a berth in the merchant service. On the way to Boston, he encounters Lenora Torrence, a widowed ship owner with a formidable reputation that has caused some to call her "the Boston Ice Witch." Angered by the execution of his father by the British, Hamilton accepts Mrs. Torrence's offer of a partnership in a privateering venture, with Hamilton and Mrs. Torrence sharing the profits with a former Dutch naval officer, Hans Van Leyden. Commanding the privateer...

Just after the end of the Civil War, the Mississippi river boat Delilah, a large paddlewheel steamer carrying many war veterans back to their homes along the river, explodes and burns, killing hundreds of the passengers. U.S. Army Major Keith Harding, himself a survivor of the Delilah's sinking, is sent by the Army to the nearby river town of Britton's Landing to investigate the tragedy and determine who looted a large shipment of gold bullion from the wreck after the explosion and fire. There are at first two main suspects, Confederate veterans who were aboard the steamboat when the tragedy...