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The Black Gold Rush transforms the Old West into the newit's the seventies in Wyoming's Powder River Basin, and a cheap "clean" coal strike promises a 500-year supply. Coal-fired power plants are built in record times, railways duel for the rights-of-way in and out of the coal fields, and wide spots in the road burst into towns and cities, demanding housing and schools, recreation and entertainment, hospitals and clinics. Miners and trainmen are hired by the hundredsmoney flows while the good times roll.

And true to the nature of the boom-and-bust American West, prosperity is followed by depravitydrugs, prostitution, and gambling, all to be dealt with by law enforcement that is understaffed and underfunded. Add to this storm of uncertainty a veteran of railroad law enforcement, Special Agent Will Allen. Retired (almost fired), Will is a private consultant working, when the spirit moves him, for any railway with a need for discretionthe unsolvable theft, the combustible tragedy, oras in this casethe regrettable "accident," his specialty. Inthis case: a 15-year-old girl learns her dad's railway death was faked, and only Allen can help.

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