This is the kind of story where one person faces multiple attempts on her life in a very short period of time, attempting to beat off all of her adversaries. That person is U.S. Marshall, Helen Morrissey. She's been sent to the remote Sierra Nevadan mountain town of Kill Devil Falls, a virtual ghost town, to pick up a prisoner. There are very few residents of this town, which is riddled with sink holes caused by the gold mines under the mountains. Those few remaining residents have uniquely oddball reasons for being there, and none of them are good (neither the people nor the reasons).
The prisoner is only the first to die, as Helen fights off an ever dwindling number of residents as they try numerous means of killing her. There's not much time for characterization, although each of the nasty characters is nasty in his or her own way. Helen is a bad ass tough cop, and that's about all the characterization we get for her.
However, the strength of this book (beyond its non-stop plot, if that appeals), is the description of the setting. Kill Devil Falls is a rural, poisoned and condemned town, surrounded and undermined by holes in the ground put there by desperate men hoping to find riches of gold. In the midst of the mayhem, Klingborg describes the town so well that the reader feels as though they've just come back from a visit to the deserted town. It's not a particularly pleasant place to visit, but at least we got there before it disappeared completely.
Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for providing a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.