Conan Flagg, private investigator and owner of both a ranch in Eastern Oregon and a bookstore in coastal Holliday Beach, comes home from a business trip in Japan to find that an old friend is urgently trying to get in touch with him. George needs Conan’s help to figure out who is behind a series of incidents that started a feud between his family and that of a neighboring rancher. Unfortunately by the time Conan arrives, George has already been murdered. An interesting setting but too much description of the landscape tends to slow the pace of this unremarkable who-dun-it.