The Goldilocks Murder

San Francisco detective Timothy Walker has just been hired for another missing person assignment, this time by an east coast business consortium called the Seven Sisters. When he quickly finds the missing sister, murdered by a blow to the head, he begins a transcontinental search for the killer. The murder weapon: a vintage-era, fully loaded canvas sack of gold nuggets. Travelling with former client and current partner Molly Dugan, Walker takes his investigation from California to New York. They pursue clues which will incriminate the gentlemanly and dangerously unstable Carol Brandauer, who is engaged in a deadly game of pursuit himself, seeking that which Walker is beginning to learn. Gold fever is the enduring ailment infecting the cast of characters whom Walker uncovers in his hunt, which involves not only Brandauer and his strangely afflicted henchman Dwight Blossom, but also individuals who lived and died in the gold fields of 1850's California. Intelligently assessing characters is one of walker's strengths. but in this investigation, he must also haunt the libraries and booksellers of New York City to see what he can decipher from a long-ago novel, journal, and newspapers. Those who enjoyed Jim Coyle's California detective novel, Evil at Its Ease, will enjoy the way in which that state's storied history becomes a gold mine of clues to solve The Goldilocks Murder.