This is the second book in the Henry Wright Mystery Series. Henry, recently a widower, is a retired chief of police from a small town in northern Wisconsin. He is living quietly in Palm Springs in a mid-century house with his friend Charles Knightly.

Henry has many ex-colleagues that he met during his long career who appreciate his skill for working the apparently insolvable cases.

Bob Elf is a gold mineworker in California's Parent Load who is entombed in his mine by a large explosion that seals him in.

Henry Wright drives from his house in Palm Springs to the Sierra American state foothills to help out Bill Rustow, the Lawman of Tuolumne County.

Rustow is shorthanded and inevitably his help in calculation out who mightiness have wanted Elf dead. Henry spends a week in Genus sonora wherever he discovers that it is much like the Wild West of old than the sleepy eyed little town it appears to be.